


A Little Child Shall Lead Them

by Zetared



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Chronic Pain, Gore, Kid Fic, M/M, Nonbinary Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2019-06-14
Packaged: 2020-05-12 01:09:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19218559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zetared/pseuds/Zetared
Summary: One minor difference in the fabric of history means that, when the time comes, Crowley can’t bring himself to deliver the antichrist. This is a “Raising Adam fic”.





	A Little Child Shall Lead Them

**Author's Note:**

> In my defense, I tried to make it fluffy. I really did. That said, all my stories have happy endings. No angels, or antichrists were (irreparably) harmed by this fic. Crowley has a time of it, but he's, you know. Resilient.

In general, Crowley is fond of the question “why me?”

It covers all types of grievances. Coffee down your favorite shirt, traffic unexpectedly slowing down your bus, two of your fellow demons trying to foist a baby on you so you might deliver it to a Satanic church and thereby start the End of Days. That sort of totally relatable thing.

“Why me?” was, in this latter case, an entirely legitimate question, however. The answer, unfortunately, is likely Ineffable. 

It’s not as if Crowley has a good history of following orders in the directest of routes. Told to “make some trouble,” Crowley offered a pretty girl a piece of fruit. Granted, that fruit was Forbidden. But Crowley hadn’t known _why_ it was Forbidden, and he certainly hadn’t expected the sheer level of fuckery that went down after Eve ate it. Seemed like overkill, to him.

When sent by his superiors to spread evil and destruction in his wake, Crowley tended toward minor inconveniences and stalking around naturally-occurring disasters for which he might take credit on the sly. Humans were capable of plenty of evil on their own, and that meant that Crowley could, quite handily, outsource with ease. 

And now, another order, given to him directly: Take the baby a church. Hand it over to a nun. Done and dusted.

And he might have done that bit, at least, without trouble. Might have went right over to the church, handed over a basket without asking questions, and got right out.

Except that, instead, he calls Aziraphale, first. 

The baby wails in the backseat and Crowley pulls off the road, picks up his car phone, and dials with trembling fingers.

“Aziraphale,” he says, “We need to talk.”

“Crowley?” A pause. “Is that a _baby_ I hear? Whatever are you doing?”

Crowley explains himself, all in a rush. The antichrist, in a basket, directions to a church, then orders to wait. Wait for the world to end.

“Oh. Oh, dear. Well, I suppose you could simply not do it.”

“What, disobey my Authorities? Are you mad?”

“You’re a demon,” the angel replies, stiffly, “Surely disobedience is expected.”

“Not that sort,” Crowley grounds out. The sounds the baby is making are starting to drive him mad. 

“Then deliver him?” Aziraphale suggests. Aziraphale is not especially prone to long-sightedness. Comes of spending so much time reading old books. 

“And then what? The world ends and all that’s in it?” Crowley snaps. “No more fine, festive dishes, Angel. No more interesting music. Nothing but harps and angelic harmonies until the universe itself caves in.”

A long pause on the line, so long that Crowley thinks he might have gotten disconnected. 

Then, softly. “What do intend to do, instead?”

Crowley turns back in his seat, eyeing the closed, wailing basket with a gimlet eye. “Hide it, I suppose.” Or kill it. He could certainly try. It’s only a baby, right now, anyway. It surely wouldn’t be difficult.

The thought makes bile rise up in his throat. He swallows thickly. All right, then, maybe not that.

“Could leave it on the side of the road,” he says, uneasily.

“Oh, you wouldn’t. Would you?” Aziraphale sounds especially fussy. “It’s only a baby.”

Aziraphale, as far as Crowley is aware, has no _real_ positive feelings on babies. But he likely finds leaving children in the cold to die the sort of thing he should argue against doing if only on pure principle. 

There’s enough power, between two minor servants of Hell and Heaven, respectively, to keep a baby under wraps. Crowley is sure of it.

“We--I mean, I can’t _alone_ , but--.”

Aziraphale sounds _especially_ fussy, now. “Oh, no, I really couldn’t.”

“Angel--.”

“I couldn’t! I’m quite sure my side would be pleased not to have the world suddenly ending and the antichrist in power and everything. But _housing_ the antichrist to do it? _Protecting_ it? Preposterous. They’ll send me an angry note. They might even come down personally to check in!”

Crowley grits his teeth. “Then I’ll do it alone.”

“My dear, you haven’t enough power to--.”

“I’ll find a way. Can’t be so difficult. He’s tiny.”

“Perhaps not, but keeping track of a _child_ \--.”

“--’Bye, Angel.”

And Crowley hangs up the car phone with a clatter and then glares at the basket in the seat. “Shut it!” he shouts, and the baby goes abruptly quiet.

Crowley groans, resting his head on the steering wheel. If he fails to deliver the baby, his supervisors will be notified, and they’ll track him down with ease before he’s so much as taken a step. 

“You’ll be needing this, I imagine,” a familiar voice says, causing Crowley to startle violently. In the passenger seat sits Aziraphale, posture stiff as a board. And in his arms is a baby wrapped in a hospital blanket.

“Angel, what the fu--?”

“--He’s a foundling. Found him on a stoop. They must resemble each other well enough, don’t they?”

Crowley shrugs. They’re the same color. Beyond that, he imagines one baby is just like the rest. Still, he stares. “You...what do you want to--?”

“They want a baby, my dear. So give them one. And then take the-the-- _antichrist_ ,” he whispers that last, eyes darting about, “--and do whatever you please with him.”

Aziraphale hands him the new infant. “Go on, then. Best be quick.” And then he’s gone in a rustle of feathers.

Crowley blinks, utterly stunned.

\--

It goes well, all in all. Put the new baby in the basket, leave the antichrist in the car for a bit. Hand the imposter over to a very talkative nun, go on about his business. It’s _too_ easy, almost. Until he gets back to the Bentley and realizes that his problems are only just beginning.

“Fuck,” Crowley says to the baby, conversationally. “What am I _doing_?”

\--

He’s the thing of it. 

At the very beginning--of the world, if not the universe--Crowley gave an apple to a woman. And she ate it. And she Knew things she had not been allowed, before, to Know. And then she’d shared her knowledge with her partner (just good, healthy cohabitation, as far as Crowley is concerned) and he Knew, too. And together, in their Knowing, they’d done things like stitched themselves some clothes and made a baby.

And then God had been angry. And Aziraphale, worried about what God might do in His tiff, had let the first humans sneak away. With the angel’s flaming sword, no less. (At which point, Crowley had decided that he liked the angel immensely, but that was neither here nor there).

Afterward, Aziraphale had been sent off on some other business. But the only directive Crowley had ever gotten was “go start some trouble,” and he decided to continue with that as his mission statement until another one was given.

So, he’d followed Adam and Eve out of the Garden. 

And he had, unseen and unknown by any mortal beast, witnessed the birth of Cain, the first human child.

He’d hung about for the second one, too. 

And, well. They weren’t so bad, children. Sort of helpless, mostly, and highly prone to suggestion. And Crowley had tempted them, from time to time, just for some harmless fun. He’d slither up to them when mummy wasn’t watching and give a toy to one and not the other and then let them work it out. To his defense, he hadn’t expected the violence. He hadn’t taught them _that_. He’d just given them something shiny and interesting to play with, and look how it’d all built up! Look what had happened, the first fratricide, the first murder.

Children, he felt, were far _too_ suggestable. And Adam and Eve had _no idea_ what they were doing. They were the first ever parents, after all. It wasn’t like there were books. 

But Crowley had watched the boys when Eve was too busy trying to keep everyone fed and Adam was too busy trying to keep them all safe from harm. Crowley had regularly yanked Abel away from poisonous berries and had kept Cain entertained so he wouldn’t bother his mother to tears. All the while, he kept himself out of sight of the grown ups. But the boys chattered about him endlessly, and that was how Crawly the snake became the first imaginary friend.

The point being: Crowley had loved those kids, a fair bit. And he’d come to recognize them in the eyes of every child from that point on who crossed his path over the course of the next six-thousand odd years. 

Cain and Abel--the first murderer and his victim, to most. 

But to Crowley, they’d always been two small boys.

\--

It takes a _whopper_ of a demonic miracle to keep the baby hidden from any influences who might want to look in on him. Every day, Crowley feeds into the whammy to keep it vibrant, and the drain on his own energies is magnificent. Bad enough he’s around and about all hours, anyway, keeping the baby warm and fed and tidied up. 

The daily tasks of child rearing are too much to manage in his sparse, functional show house of a London flat. So, he moves. 

He calls Aziraphale, first. “Wanted to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye?” Aziraphale asks. He sounds distracted. “Off on a long mission, are you? Need any help?”

“No, Angel. _Goodbye_ goodbye. I’m leaving London.”

A clatter. Possibly a book being abruptly set down. Now, Aziraphale is all focus. “You what?”

“Not an easy place to raise a baby, my apartment. And then I thought, well, might be good to get out of the city entirely, right? Find somewhere...cozy.” Crowley tries not to sound as utterly lost as he feels. The last time he’d raised children, cities hadn’t been invented, yet. But he’s almost certain that cities aren’t the _best_ place to raise kids. And he wants to do this _right_. 

“My dear boy, you didn’t really--?”

“So, I’ll send you a line, once I get settled. Suppose you could visit, if you like. Can’t say I’m going to be much help with the Arrangement, for a while. But you could always, er. Well. Stop by. Socially. If you’d like.”

“Of course,” Aziraphale says, meekly. “Well. Safe travels.”

“You, too.” A pause. “Well, no. You know what I mean.”

“Yes.”

“‘Bye.”

Crowley hands up his mobile and runs a nervous hand through his hair. That could have gone worse.

\--

Jasmine Cottage is aptly named. It reeks of the flower for which is titled, the likes of which grow in messy, unkempt droves all around the yard. Crowley’s fingers ache to tear up the lawn and dreadful excuse for a garden and start over. Maybe he will, once they’re settled.

He’d picked Tadfield by tossing a dart down into a map.

It’s quaint. That’s the word that comes easiest to mind. It has a grocers and a hardware store and a school. When he goes to trade over some money and some miracled papers for the keys to the place, the caretaker responds extra favorably to the baby he’s got hanging in a bassinet from his arm. If Crowley had known earlier in his immortal life how easy it was to get things done simply by waving an infant about, he might have acquired one earlier.

He’s named the boy ‘Adam.’ It seems right. Eve and her partner have been on his mind quite a lot as of late. And it had been too painful--and too potentially prophetic in either direction--to consider ‘Cain’ or ‘Abel’ as viable options.

Adam is a beautiful baby. Crowley is not unbiased, now, but he still feels it’s true.

“‘Course, you ought to be, oughtn’t you? Lucifer was handsome as they come. Part of his charm. Not much to look at, now, in my opinion, but I’d imagine you’ll turn out all right, despite it.”

Adam is, by and large, what most knowing matrons would call “an easy baby.” No colic, no unexplained tempers. He cries and needs and demands as much as any helpless, non-verbal being might, but he’s reasonable about it, most of the time.

“Don’t fuss,” Crowley says, when trying and failing to miracle a bottle that’s the right temperature. (Eventually, he learns that practically everything related to childcare is better done by hand than trickery--and it wastes less of his precious energies, besides--but these are early days, yet).

And Adam stops fussing and waits, relatively patiently, for Crowley to figure it out. 

By the time Adam is a month old, they have a system down pat. Wake up at dawn, check the diaper, fill him up. Change the resulting diaper, feed him again. Keep him entertained for a bit, possibly do another round of the diapering or the feeding or both. More of the entertaining, feeding, and diapering. Finally, the sun goes down. Wash him up, one last feed, pop him off to bed. If lucky, have a few hours of peace and silence. If less lucky, repeat all previous steps through the night as well as the day and hope for the best next time. 

Parenting is the type of brutal torture that Hell could only _dream_ of devising. 

“You should be glad and grateful, young man, that you’re too cute to send back with the stork.”

Crowley’s plans of handling the garden and suchlike go out the window. Adam is his entire world, day in and out. It does get easier, with time--the older Adam gets, the more accustomed to routine, the better the baby sleeps, at least--but it feels to Crowley that there’s never a single, solitary moment of true, actual peace to be had.

And then, of course, there’s the miracling. The daily feed of power required to keep Adam off the radar is immense, far too much for one occult being to handle, most likely, though Crowley learns quickly to compensate by miracling _nothing_ else. He takes to swaddling the baby up and running out to the grocers at all hours, stocking up on formula and diapers and binkies. He’s damn grateful that he’d had an errant thought, once, to set up a bank account and toss a bunch of money into it. He’d been lost entirely without his credit card (though charming the local shops into taking the thing had been a hassle, at first. He’s once again amazed by the power a tiny, squirmy human has over adults when the need arises). 

Crowley starts dozing off during Adam’s feeding times. Usually, it works out that Adam will fall asleep with him, though, so the demon sees no harm in it. 

Then, somewhere in the haze that has become his existence, someone knocks on the door.

“Hello!” a cheery voice greets him. “I’m Madame Tracy. So nice to meet you, Mr. Crowley.”

Crowley blinks at her. 

“Oh, there’s the lamb!” Mdme. Tracy coos, bustling right over to Adam. Crowley smothers the instinctive reaction to bash her brains in when she touches him. Even his tired mind recognizes that he’s missed a step, somewhere.

“You do look a fright, Mr. C. Good thing that friend of yours called me in, isn’t it? I admit, it’s not my usual line of work, but it’s a good change. Starting to do horrors on my hips and my toes, the other lark.”

“Er?”

“Why don’t you go make yourself a cup of tea while the little man--what’s his name?”

“Adam.”

“Oh, so traditional. How nice. Well, Adam and I will get acquainted, then, while you have a nice cuppa.”

Crowley finds himself drifting off toward the cottage kitchen, leaving her to it.

Then the landline rings, which Crowley finds fascinating because he doesn’t remember ever having set it up.

“‘Lo?”

“Crowley!” Aziraphale snaps. “What are you playing at? You were meant to send me your address. Did you forget? And here I’ve been wondering after you for _days_ , and then a few mornings back I wake up and _there you are_ , on my radar as usual. And _so was the baby_.”

Crowley’s whole body goes cold, like he’s been shoved into a meat locker. “What?” he croaks out.

“I’ve sent someone. She should be there today.”

“She’s...already here…?” Crowley asks more than states. He’s very confused.

“Oh, good! She’s an all right sort, I think. Should be able to handle the baby just fine.”

“Angel, what--?”

“My dear, you really must be more careful. Did you forget the glamor?”

No. He hadn’t. He’d never, ever be so careless. But he might have been too taxed to give it enough juice. Crowley sighs, digging his fingertips into his eyes. “No,” he manages, muffled. He yawns, loudly. 

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale replies, as if that yawn holds all the information he needs. “I’ve asked Mdme. Tracy to come in every weekday from nine to five. Is that all right? She’s staying with a relative of some sort just a town over. She wanted to retire from her current business and, well. Let’s just leave it at that.”

“What--?”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, with the infinite patience only an angel of the Lord might possess. “Are you doing all right?”

Crowley finds himself overwhelmed. He sits down. “I don’t know,” he admits.

Aziraphale makes a soft, sympathetic clucking sound. “Well, Mdme. Tracy should help at least a bit. I suggest that you use the opportunity she provides to _rest up_.”

“Right,” Crowley says. “Should I--?”

“Better not,” Aziraphale says, briskly. “Just doing my part to stop the end of the world, aren’t I?”

“Thanks, Angel,” Crowley says, softly, despite the earlier brush off.

“My pleasure, dear boy.”

\--

Crowley doesn’t make himself a cup of tea, but he does make one for Mdme. Tracy. “Hope it’s all right,” he says, vaguely. He stares at the picture she makes, all made up and brightly colored like a tropical bird. Adam reaches up and tugs at the neon-orange of her hair. It wobbles a bit, so Crowley figures it’s a wig.

“Oh _thank_ you, Mr. C. So kind. Now, then. Adam and I’ve got it all in hand ‘til five. Why don’t you go scamper off and take a nap, hm?”

“Oh, well. I don’t really--.” Crowley swallows thickly, glancing at Adam. He hasn’t been more than a few feet away from the baby in nearly two months. “I don’t think I should--.”

“Go on, Mr. Crowley,” Mdme. Tracy says, very firmly. And Crowley, for the immortal life of him, can’t argue with her.

\--

It’s the best nap he’s ever had, and that includes the entirety of the 18th century.

\--

The naps help. There are, as far as Crowley is aware--and he’s certain Aziraphale would inform him--no more incidents with the sanctity of his wards. Crowley struggles, at first, to fit Mdme. Tracy into his and Adam’s daily routines, but he’s nothing if not adaptable thanks to his long years spent among humanity. He manages to learn how to pass Adam off into her arms every other weekday morning without suffering a pang of utter loss. 

Then, about six months in, he has a scare.

He’s listening to the radio, washing Adam off in the kitchen sink, when the telephone rings again. And this time, it’s not Aziraphale. 

“Crowley!”

Crowley nearly drops the receiver. “Uh, hello, this is he speaking.”

“Crowley! You have been unavailable!”

“Yeah. Yes. So busy, you see, with the tempting and the--.”

“You are to be issued a commendation.”

“Oh. Am I?”

“For delivering the antichrist as ordered in a timely and thorough fashion. Our agents report he is doing well in his new home and everything seems to be progressing as expected.”

“Oh. Er. Great.”

“That is all!”

“Uh-yep. Thanks. ‘Bye.”

Crowley stares at the phone and slowly leverages it back into its holder. Hell has never used such mundane means to contact him, before. He isn’t certain if they have the know how or the motivation to use his telephone number to track them down at Jasmine Cottage. He can’t take the risk. He glances at Adam and the clock in turn. It’s a weekend, so Mdme. Tracy won’t be stopping by. 

“All right,” Crowley says to Adam, pulling him out of his bath and rubbing him dry with a soft towel with ducks on it. “So, here’s the situation. I need to do a miracle. Not a big one. But it’s going to do a doozy on my reserves, I think. Which means that once we get you dry and dressed, we both need to lie down and take a nap. Does that sound fair?”

Adam blinks at him and bops Crowley in the nose with a flailing fist. 

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

Crowley wrangles his wiggling baby into a onesie, sets Adam down in his crib, and, after a moment of thought, carefully lies himself out on his own bed. Then, he miracles the telephone to be untraceable.

And then everything does promptly black.

\--

“Not so quickly, dear boy,” Aziraphale’s voice says, fretfully. Aziraphale’s hands are on Crowley’s chest, pressing him back into the pillows.

Adam is in his crib, making the soft, snuffling sound that usually precedes a good cry. 

“I have to--.”

Aziraphale pushes him back again. “Just lie _still_. I have him.”

Crowley watches, bemused, as Aziraphale approaches the crib and plucks Adam out of it. The angel shushes him, cradling the baby against his chest and rocking rhythmically. He’s even managing to properly support Adam’s head.

“You’re actually okay at that,” Crowley remarks. His shock is clear. So is his exhaustion.

Aziraphale shoots him one of his prissy looks. “I am over _six thousand years old_. I have encountered _babies_ before.” A pause. “And I’ve been reading some books.”

Crowley grins. “I see.”

“The fact of the matter, dear, is that you really can’t go on as you are much longer. Pouring all your power into wards and telephones, it’s just not--.”

“How’d you know about the telephone?” Crowley asks, sitting up sharply in panic. He blinks as black spots fill his vision. 

“Lie _down_ ,” Aziraphale says, peevishly. “Because your ward wavered--just for a moment, but I thought I ought to call, just in case. And when I did the number didn’t go through right at all until I miracled my way through to it. It didn’t take a genius to connect the dots. I assume _they_ rang you up?”

“Commendation. For delivering the baby without trouble,” Crowley manages, with a low, hollow laugh.

“Hm. Yes,” Aziraphale replies. He glances down at Adam. “He’s gone back to sleep. Should I put him back in the crib?”

“No, no. Hand ‘em over,” Crowley says, with a yawn.

“Co-sleeping can be dangerous,” Aziraphale says, uncertainly. “You might roll over on him.”

Crowley shoots the angel an unimpressed look. “Then keep an eye out and make sure I don’t.” A pause. “You are...you’re staying, aren’t you?”

Aziraphale’s expression goes soft. “Of course, my dear. That’s what I was trying to say, before. You need the boost to your wards. And I--. Well. There’s not much else to be doing, these days, without you around to thwart.”

Crowley smiles. He reaches out for Adam and the angel hands him over. Crowley yawns again, resting on his back with Adam safely swaddled up on his chest. 

“You should--.”

“I get it, angel. You read the books. I’m glad. I know what I’m doing, all right? Been at it for a while, now. We’ve worked out most of the kinks.”

Aziraphale nods agreeably. “I’ll just sit here, then,” he says.

Crowley hums something in agreement, but he’s already mostly asleep. He feels himself relax bodily as Aziraphale’s own power leeches into the wards, easing the strain. “S’better,” he murmurs.

“Yes,” Aziraphale agrees. “Much.”

\--

Mdme. Tracy beams at the two of them come Monday morning. 

“So glad to meet you properly, Mr. Fell,” she says, cheerfully picking Adam out of Crowley’s arms and going off to change his diaper. 

Crowley watches her go. “We could probably give her the sack, now.”

Aziraphale shoots him a look.

“I’m just saying. With you here to help out--.”

“--I’ll ask her to cut her hours back. Say ten to three. Will that suit you?”

Crowley rubs at the back of his neck. “It’s not that I don’t appreciate her work. She’s great with Adam. It’s only that--.”

“I’ve no desire to have my days held hostage by the daily needs of a child, Crowley, no matter how precious he might be. And you, my dear, are long overdue for some time for yourself.”

Crowley doesn’t quite know how to explain to the angel how much he misses Adam when the baby’s not about. It’s not something one can say and still sound properly demonic, even if the baby in question _is_ the son of Satan. 

“All right,” he replies, instead. “I did have some vague plans of doing something with the gardens out back.”

Aziraphale beams at him. “That’s a capital idea.”

\--

With Aziraphale around to provide his own strength to the wards, Crowley has enough residual power to support the casting of a few miracles. This is a blessing, as it turns out, because the garden is even more of a mess than he’d first supposed. He tears out all the old, dying plants only to find that the soil is leached of nutrients, pale and crumbling despite the reliable rains.

It’s not especially demonic, pouring life into anything, let alone the earth itself, but Crowley doesn’t figure anyone from Hell is about to notice or care. Their eyes, with any luck at all, are on the American diplomat and his foundling son.

Crowley blinks blearily once the task is done. The soil is dark and loamy and perfect, now, but he’s tapped out and exhausted with the effort. It’s possible he’ll never regain his former reserves if he doesn’t abstain from using his powers for a month or so to play catch up. But abstinence is not in his nature. (Er, that is, well.) And he keeps forgetting himself, besides. Six-thousand years of easily casting without a thought is a hard habit to break.

“Crowley!” Aziraphale calls from the back door. The angel stands in the threshold, Adam on his hip. The boy is nearly a year old, now, and as healthy as can be, if Crowley is any judge at all.

Crowley stands with only a tiny stagger and obediently goes to the door. It’s just past Mdme. Tracy’s hours with them, and Aziraphale is never entirely comfortable being left alone with Adam without supervision. “‘Lo, big man,” Crowley greets Adam, who already reaches out to him, babbling away. Crowley nods sagely. “Mmhm, I’m sure,” he agrees to the utter nonsense. Aziraphale read somewhere or other that talking to babies stimulates verbal development. Crowley, used to talking to his plants, adapted quickly. Aziraphale suggested that perhaps he keep the shouting and taunting to a minimum, however, lest he scar the antichrist for life.

“Tore all the old bits out, finally,” Crowley says conversationally to the baby and Aziraphale both. “Ground was a wreck, but I got it sorted. How was _your_ day, Adam? Hm?”

Adam babbles at him and Crowley nods along, interjecting with noises of agreement or interest where it seems approps. Once Adam winds down, Crowley turns to the angel and offers him a grin. “What about you?”

Aziraphale is far too polite to roll his eyes, but the desire is implied. “Fine, my dear. I’ve successfully translated that Babylonian scroll that arrived last week. It’s missing a few chapters, I’m afraid, but I suppose I might be able to find them via another repository, in time.” And so on.

Crowley nods and makes the exact same noises of agreement and interest to this that he did to the baby’s babble. Aziraphale, thankfully, doesn’t notice. 

\--

As Adam grows, so does his power.

At first, Crowley has himself convinced he’s imagining things. He’d felt no more of a spark from the antichrist than he had from the imposter baby he’d replaced him with--if Adam had exhibited any supernatural leanings so early on, Crowley never would have been able to make the trade without getting caught. However, when Adam turns one and then two and then three and four, a certain unmistakable presence appears, creating an aura around the child that thrums with a steady supply of energy, an aura that spreads out from his body the older he gets. 

Crowley is positive that neither Aziraphale nor Mdme. Tracy can sense the decidedly demonic influence, and Crowley’s too nervous about the possible repercussions to ask outright. Instead, he starts to push more of his personal energies into the wards to compensate. The more powerful Adam becomes, the easier he’ll be to spot, and that just will not do.

\--

“Adam!”

Adam’s golden curls betray him. They stick up from behind the edge of the sofa behind which the boy is currently crouched. 

“Where has that boy gone, I wonder?” Crowley asks loudly to the air. “Angel, have you seen the kid?”

Aziraphale doesn’t look up from his book. He’s spoiled many games of hide-and-go-seek in the past and has since learned his lesson. “No, my dear.”

Crowley lifts up an entire kitchen chair. “Not there,” he muses. He peeks into the biscuit jar (a ceramic cow that goes ‘moo’ when you lift its head off; Aziraphale had fussed mightily when Mdme. Tracy gifted it to them, but Adam adores it). Adam giggles. His curls wiggle.

“Where could he possibly have gone?” Crowley bemoans, faking a good deal of rising consternation. “I’ve lost the kid, Angel!”

“Tsk, tsk,” Aziraphale says, literally pronouncing the words. “Lose your own head, next.”

Adam giggles again.

“Where, oh where, has Adam gone? Maybe the wolves got him.” Crowley opens the back door out into the garden and gamely shouts out a loud “Did you take my kid, wolves?”

Adam rustles behind the sofa, trying to sneak around the front of it, intent to change his hiding place, even though that is demonstrably against the rules. Aziraphale continues to keep his eyes steady on his book.

Crowley wanders back out into the living and makes a show of looking the sofa all over while Adam presses himself between a bookshelf and the wall. “I thought I saw,” Crowley mutters to himself as if in thought. “Must have been wrong.”

The demon grins over at Aziraphale. Aziraphale meets his eyes and sighs, brows raised. “Have you tried the fireplace?”

Crowley smacks his forehead. “The fireplace! Silly me!” And then he promptly goes to stand in the hearth, staring up the chimney. “Hallo? Adam?”

Adam giggles, especially as Crowley pulls his head back and appears with soot all over his face.

Aziraphale also laughs, at that. 

Crowley blinks, wipes a finger over his cheek, and scowls at the dark line. Instinctively, he miracles it away. The resulting dizziness sends him reeling, stumbling against Aziraphale’s chair. Aziraphale’s hand lashes out, gripping Crowley’s wrist tightly. 

“Are you all right?” the angel asks, surprised. 

Crowley clears his throat. “Lost my footing,” he excuses in a low mumble. 

Adam pops out from his hiding place, eyebrows drawn. 

Crowley throws a weak grin his way. “Look, I found him! I’m a genius. Aren’t I a genius, Angel?”

Aziraphale’s grip on his wrist tightens. The angel frowns, studying his face, and the demon quickly dances out of his grasp, going to scoop Adam up with a loud “young man, where did you go?”

Adam falls into giggles again, especially when Crowley gives them both a twirl and promptly throws himself and the kid down on the cushions of the sofa with a thump. 

“Where did you go, Adam?” Crowley asks. This is part of the game. Possibly Crowley’s favorite part, ever since Adam had started stringing together sentences.

Adam scrunches up his face in thought. He wiggles about on top of Crowley’s chest, situating himself more comfortably. His socked foot digs into Crowley’s knee. Crowley nudges him over with a small “oof” sound. The antichrist has the boniest limbs of any creature on earth, the demon is convinced.

“I went to America,” Adam decides. “I went to America and I saw Elvis.”

Aziraphale snorts softly from his seat. Crowley has been introducing Adam to what he considers the best of human culture. Elvis isn’t Crowley’s brand of cool, but the man _was_ a legend.

“Oh, yeah? Where did you find him?”

“In a diner,” Adam says, without hesitation. “He was flipping burgers.”

Crowley grins. “Seems like a good place to retire,” he says, agreeably. “Did you go anywhere else?”

“I went to a desert,” Adam says. “I walked in the sand. I wanted to make a castle, but it was too dry. And then I found a wall.”

“A wall?” Crowley asks, playing along.

“It was a big wall. So tall I couldn’t see the top of it. And there was a gate. And it was open, and I went in.”

“In to what?”

Adam tilts his head, looking pensive. “A garden? Lots of plants.”

Crowley and Aziraphale both look up, startled, as a sudden spike of power thrums through the cottage. 

“Crowley?” Aziraphale says, standing up from his seat, looking around with a guarded expression.

“On it,” Crowley snaps, already gathering his faint reserves of power into his charge and pushing it, hard, into the wards. He sits up with Adam in his arms, curling around the boy as if that will keep his aura in check.

“My dear,” Aziraphale says, voice tight. He’s pushing his own power into the ward, body tense with the strain. 

Suddenly, the spike disappears as if it had never been. Crowley gasps in several sharp breaths, collapsing bodily around the small boy who sits, unruffled, in his lap. 

“Can I go outside and play?” Adam asks.

Crowley wheezes, unable to respond. Aziraphale is quicker to recover and says, briskly, “Maybe you’d better go sit out front and greet Mdme. Tracy. She’ll be here soon.”

“Okay!” Adam agrees. He loves Mdme. Tracy, and when he meets her at the door, out of sight of the angel and demon, the Mdme. often gives him sweets on the sly. The boy wiggles out of Crowley’s lax hold and races to the door and out into the front yard.

“It’s all right, now, I think,” Aziraphale says, cautiously. “Everything seems stable.”

Crowley manages a nod. He goes to push himself off the couch and ends up falling forward. Aziraphale catches him, having seen it coming. 

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, mildly. “I think now is a good time to come clean with me, don’t you?”

The demon huffs a small breath, steadying himself on the angel’s shoulders, pulling himself upright. “Yeah,” he agrees, faintly. “Guess so.”

\--

While Mdme. Tracy and Adam make a cake in the kitchen, Aziraphale and Crowley sit upstairs, perching on either end of Crowley’s bed. (They could sit in Aziraphale’s room, but it’s really more of a study, and the only thing to sit on is the single desk chair and its big wooden desk, which is too covered with books to support anyone’s weight on it).

Crowley more sprawls than sits, too exhausted to consider holding his body upright. Aziraphale perches, stiff spined, and frowns at the demon with all possible righteousness. “You’re being very stupid.”

Crowley opens one eye, peering blearily at the angel. “What was I to do? Leave him blaring like a beacon for all and sundry to see?”

Aziraphale’s lips purse. “You could have told me what the matter was. I knew you were using yourself up, but I had no idea why. I thought it to be a simple surplus of caution on your part, and I had _no idea_ how overtaxed you’d become. I really wish you’d told me what you were sensing before. I have plenty of reserves to spend.”

Crowley shakes his head. “And leave us both so drained we can’t act when Heaven and Hell come to call? No, thanks.”

“Maybe we should.”

“Should what?”

“Let them come.”

Crowley bolts up right, full of indignation and rage. His vision spots and he sways dangerously. Aziraphale makes a noise--concerned or annoyed, Crowley can’t tell.

“He’s the antichrist, Crowley. He will be what he was born to be.”

Crowley glares at the angel. “That’s nature. What about nurture? I’m not being bad around the kid, Angel, not even a little. No demonic influences in this house. I’m being _good_.”

Aziraphale goes to pat his hand. Crowley lifts his lips in a snarl and pulls his own hands far away. 

“I don’t believe it matters. He is as he was made. He has a fated purpose in this world, as we all do as part of God’s plan.”

Crowley growls. “God can’t want the world to end. He loves it, doesn’t he?”

Aziraphale bites his lip. He always becomes rather untethered when the subject of their Holy Father comes up. “I can’t say I know, really. He has been silent for a very long time.” A pause. Then, quickly, “But I’m sure He loves it. He loves all of his creations.”

“Then why? Why let Adam arise, a weapon of destruction? Who creates something they love only to let it be destroyed? Who lets a _child_ \--?”

Aziraphale clears his throat, interrupting. “I really can’t say.”

And Crowley knows it’s just as the angel states: he can’t say. To do so would be unconscionable, from an angel. Aziraphale already struggles, from time to time, to speak the party line. He cannot allow himself to question the will of God now, even over something as terrible as this.

Crowley eases himself off the bed. He stands a moment, swaying. Once he feels capable of doing so, he turns slightly and meets the angel eye for eye. “I love him,” Crowley says, firmly. “I shouldn’t have let it happen, I suppose, but I did. I took him in and took care of him, and now he’s mine. And I’ll be damned twice over if I’m going to let anyone hurt him, even himself. I don’t care what the Plan is. I don’t care what Hell will do to me when they find out. Promise me, Angel. Promise me you’ll keep him safe, if I can’t.”

Aziraphale opens and closes his mouth a few times, gobsmacked. “I can’t keep that promise, Crowley,” he finally says, in a whisper. “It’s not possible.”

Crowley lifts his shoulders in a shrug. “And that’s why I didn’t tell you. I knew you couldn’t help.”

\--

That night, Crowley tells Adam his bedtime story and then lingers long after the tale is done and the boy is asleep. The demon curls up on the too-small bed, wrapping himself around Adam like another ward. “The world is good” he tells Adam, in a low voice. “It’s good, and you love it. And so do I.”

\--

When Crowley wakes the next morning, Adam is missing. (Crowley throws out his senses and immediately relaxes, finding the boy’s massive aura downstairs, probably eating cereal and watching weekend cartoons). Aziraphale is there, however, sitting on a too-small, blue plastic seat and looking ridiculous for it. Crowley smirks at him as he sits up on the bed and groans, stretching all the kinks out of his back.

“I want to apologize,” Aziraphale says, stiffly.

“Don’t,” Crowley says, lifting a hand. “It doesn’t matter. I understand.”

“I would never let anything happen to him that I could prevent,” the angel says.

Crowley nods. “I know.”

Silence stretches out between them, heavy and languorous, too full of itself to move easily. Aziraphale stands, and Crowley expects him to go. Instead, the angel sits down next to him on Adam’s tiny bed. They are, by necessity, pressed close at the shoulders and sides.

Aziraphale takes Crowley’s hands in his own. Crowley, mystified, watches it happen.

“I received a call from my superiors early in the morning,” Aziraphale says.

Crowley’s eyes snap up to meet the angel’s own. They are full of apology and regret. Crowley’s stomach does a terrible turn.

“I thought--that is, I had expected them to be relieved.”

Crowley’s hands grip, vice-like, around the angel’s hands. The joints under his fingers creak ominously, but Aziraphale doesn’t flinch. “What did you do?”

“I thought they would be glad, to know the antichrist might be swayed to our side. I thought they would want the world safe as much as you and I--I didn’t _realize--_.” Aziraphale’s calm is starting to crack. His anxiety bleeds out, staining the touch of his fingers, the light of his eyes.

Adam suddenly _shrieks_ from downstairs. 

The wards shatter into nothingness like a broken lightbulb. Crowley gapes like a fish, suddenly breathless and hollowed out as all of his funneled power disappears into the air. He tears himself away from Aziraphale and races out the room, tumbles down the stairs, throws himself across the living room, and scoops Adam up into his arms, cradling the small boy’s body against his chest.

“It’s fine,” Crowley lies to him, “It’s fine, it’s all fine, kid, don’t worry.”

The room fills with glaring light as four angels appear. Crowley hasn’t seen real, proper angels since that one incident in Bethlehem. He’s gotten so used to Aziraphale (old fashioned, soft, weathered by the illusion of age if not the reality) that the shock of true angels in the flesh leaves him reeling more than a bit. They are luminous. They are perfect. The glow of them makes Crowley’s skin go tight as if suffering the rays of the overbearing sun on an especially hot, dry day. 

“Where is the angel called Aziraphale?” the closest angel, a throne, based on her wings, demands.

“Is that a demon?” the one next to her questions, sounding doubtful.

The throne turns her attention more fully on Crowley. She breathes in deep. “There is the stench of evil here,” she agrees, “But it is likely only the boy.”

Adam’s hold on Crowley tightens at that. “I don’t smell,” he says, offended.

Crowley winces, shushing him. 

“Hand it over,” the throne says, holding her arms out to Crowley. “And no harm will come to you.”

Crowley takes a step back. He runs right into another angel standing behind him. Five, then, not four. And another one comes wandering up from the kitchen, so that’s six. Six high ranking angels versus one power-drained demon and an antichrist with no control. Great.

And then Aziraphale appears, also in a flash of bright light. Crowley has just long enough to note the appearance and the angel’s order to “run!” before all Hell--that is, all Heaven--breaks loose.

Crowley runs. He holds a progressively anxious Adam to his chest and races past the two startled angels behind him and through the backdoor out into the garden. He has prepared for this. On the far wall of the small garden shed, there are three glyphs drawn in his own blood, charged with his reserves over the past five years. Crowley races around the shed and--with only the slightest hesitation to spare a wild thought for Aziraphale--slams the back of his hand against the dark brown stain in the middle. The glyphs light up and, with a sucking sound of the abrupt displacement of air, the demon and boy disappear.

\--

Crowley focuses the new ward so that it rests right on top of Adam’s skin. It won’t be as effective as shielding an entire town from peering eyes, but it will have to do. He doesn’t have enough power for anything else. Even doing so little, Crowley is left sprawled in an alley of wherever the He--Heav---wherever he’s managed to take them. He holds onto Adam with a fevered grip and turns his body away from the boy, retching miserably against the dirty concrete.

“Where are we?” Adam whispers. He’s shaking. Crowley has never known the boy to scare easily. But these are hardly normal circumstances.

“Dunno,” Crowley manages, truthfully. He heaves again. There’s nothing left in his stomach, but his body isn’t done trying to empty him out physically as well as on the metaphysical level. He hasn’t a single drop of power to his name, at the moment. His corporation feels strange, without his demonic power to supplement it. Sort of too-tight and itchy. He doesn’t care for the sensation at all.

Adam’s small hand pats the demon’s back, mimicking a motion Crowley has performed for the kid himself a few times, through minor colds and bouts of flu that usually disappear within the day. Crowley isn’t certain if every child is so resilient or only sons of Satan himself, but he’s happy to take the boons where he can get them.

Crowley’s body finally starts behaving. He sits back against the sticky alley wall, rubbing the back of his hand over his bitter-tasting mouth. “Ugh.”

“Ugh,” Adam agrees, faintly. He snuggles up to Crowley. He doesn’t ask questions. He just presses close and looks at Crowley with a gaze too shrewd for his own good. As much as Crowley has tried to raise the boy as human and mundane as possible, it does no good. Crowley and Aziraphale are not humans, as much as they might try to pretend otherwise when circumstances require. Adam sees and knows too much.

“What did they want?” Adam asks, finally, once Crowley has stopped trembling with exertion and Adam himself has battled back his own fear. He’s five, now, and pragmatic to a fault. 

Crowley closes his eyes. There’s really no point, now, in anything but honesty. “They’re angels. They wanted to take you away. I’m not sure what they planned to do, after that.”

Adam considers this. What he knows of God is limited only to the stories that both Aziraphale and Crowley have told him. Bedtime tales of man-eating whales and big boats full of animals, mostly. But God creeps in, despite themselves, and his angels along with him.

“I’m hungry,” Adam says, because he’s still only a child, and he hadn’t gotten to finish his cereal.

“Okay,” Crowley agrees. He forces his eyes open and shimmies onto his feet using the wall for support. Once upright and mostly stable, he takes Adam’s hand and pulls the boy to his own feet. Then he frowns. Adam is in his pajamas and socked feet. Crowley is in yesterday’s clothes, but he also has no shoes on. In most other circumstances, he might be able to miracle something up, but he’s bone-dry. Anything that he might regain in the next day or so must go to maintaining the buzzing ward coating Adam’s skin. 

Adam follows Crowley’s gaze and wiggles his toes. The ducks on his socks wiggle, too.

“C’mere,” Crowley says, picking Adam up. The boy is big, these days, and not so easy to lug around. But the only other option--letting Adam’s feet be ravaged by rough sidewalks and who knew what detris--is untenable. 

They stagger out into the world. It’s a strange day in a strange place. There aren’t very many people milling about. The clouds above are overcast, threatening rain. Gauging the age of the buildings around them (industrial, not residential), the sparse population milling about, and the general look of the thing, Crowley feels they are in a hamlet likely not much larger than Tadfield, probably also in Britain. Beyond that, he’s stumped.

“Hey!”

Crowley turns at the call reflexively, placing a palm protectively around Adam’s head and tugging him toward his shoulder, which makes the boy squirm. 

“Hey!”

A strange figure runs toward them, trotting across the street to reach them. For a moment, Crowley is distracted by the young woman’s umbrella--a rainbow of color embedded thickly with glitter pieces, if the way it sparkles is any indication--and wellies, which are far too big for her feet and neon green. 

“‘Lo?” Crowley greets, cautiously. 

“Hi! You popped up in the wrong place. I thought maybe you weren’t comin’ at all!”

Crowley stares.

The woman is in her early forties, at least. Her skin is a dark brown marked across her nose with even darker freckles. She’s heavy set, wide in the arms and thighs. Her hair is hidden from sight under an atrocious knitted hat with a sparkly puffball on top. Her accent is thickly Welsh. She grins at him and shows prominent front teeth that jut out like a rabbit’s. 

“I’m Agnes,” she greets. “It’s an old family name.” She holds out the hand not holding the umbrella.

Baffled, Crowley takes it and receives the hearty shake she gives.

Agnes beams at him and then turns her overwhelming attention to the boy being clutched under his hand. “This must be Adam! So nice to meet you.”

Adam fidgets, breaking out of Crowley’s tight hold and turning in the demon’s arm to look at the woman speculatively. He glances sidelong at Crowley. “How does she know my name?” he stage-whispers.

Crowley shakes his head. “I don’t know.”

“Prophecy,” Agnes says, as if it’s as simple as that. “I also know you lot are in need of breakfast and a change of clothes. So let’s get on. The storm is moving in quick.”

“You’re an oracle?” Crowley says, with utter disbelief. He hasn’t run into a proper soothsayer in at least a century. (Even then, he’d chosen to ignore the bugger; folks who see the future are always trouble).

Agnes tilts her head at him, speculative. She holds up a finger in a ‘just a mo’ gesture, digs into the pocket of her big coat, and pulls forth a pair of socks and boots. They are exactly Adam’s size. With a look at Crowley, the woman sets about peeling the wet, sticky socks off of Adam’s feet to replace them with the clean socks and new boots. “There, now. You could let him walk himself, if he’d like.”

Adam does, in fact, wiggle about until Crowley puts him down. Adam stomps about in the boots a bit. “Comfy.”

Crowley frowns. “Fine, then. But how do I know we can trust you?”

Agnes’s face goes quite sad. It’s an odd look on her. “I happen to be quite fond of this world myself, lad.” She pats his shoulder. “And, on that note, m’sorry about your angel friend. He didn’t know what it was he done.”

Crowley ruthlessly squashes the ache in his chest such a statement inspires. He looks over at Adam, still stomping about like Godzilla on the pavement. “You want to join the nice lady for breakfast, kid?”

Adam grins up at him and then looks at Agnes. “Do you have apricot jam? That’s my favorite.”

Agnes smiles. “Yes. And I have cocoa, as well.” 

Adam loves cocoa. He beams at her. 

“With sprinkles?”

Crowley opens his mouth to say that the lady probably does not have sprinkles for cocoa--that is an Adam idiosyncrasy. But, to his surprise, Agnes nods.

“Rainbow sprinkles and whipped cream,” she tells Adam, warmly. She glances at Crowley. “And a cayenne-chilli powder mix, for you.”

Crowley hums in acknowledgement. “I don’t usually meet oracles with that much true insight. Especially over something so mundane.”

Agnes shrugs amiably. “That, like my name, runs in the family, too. I’ll catch you up over breakfast. Come along. We’ve to walk, but it isn’t far.”

\--

Agnes’s apartment is cramped yet tidy. She keeps stacks of books on every surface (a fact which causes Crowley’s heart to ache in no small measure) and there are pieces of art all over the walls and the furniture is a mishmash of styles and it, like the woman herself, is a giant explosion of color in every corner.

Adam kicks his feet against the rungs of the plastic molded dining room chair he’s been perched in. He sips his cocoa with loud, bubbling slurps until Crowley raises an eyebrow at him. Then he grins and goes back to his cocoa more quietly. His mug is a mess of sprinkles and cream, and the latter clings to his upper lip in a parody of a mustache. 

Crowley himself slumps at the same formica topped table as the boy. He keeps nodding off despite himself. Agnes clucks softly at him as she digs into a plate of toast and scrambled eggs. 

“You’re welcome to the couch, if you need a rest.”

Crowley draws himself up in his chair. “Nah, I’m fine. Listen, thanks for the breakfast and the clothes and all.” When they had arrived, Agnes had handed them a stack of clothing each. Now, Crowley sits in a comfortable pair of black denim jeans and a red t-shirt with long sleeves. He has shoes again, too, though they currently sit out of the way on the door-side rug. 

“It’s my pleasure, truly.”

They sit in silence a while after that. Adam finishes his cocoa and slides himself out of his seat, clearly intending to look about.

“Oi,” Crowley starts, but Agnes waves him off.

“It’s all right. There’s hardly anything in this place worth breaking, and he’s a trustworthy sort. Go on and look around, Adam Young.”

“‘Young’?” Crowley echoes, in real confusion.

Agnes colors slightly across her freckled cheeks. “I’m sorry, dear. Wrong universe, I suspect. Do you call him by your supposed surname, then?”

Crowley lifts a shoulder. “Planned to. Didn’t matter, much, excepting he was supposed to start school next year. That’s when people really start to ask questions.”

Agnes pats his hand. He allows it.

“He’s just as welcome to start his schooling here, if you’d like.”

Crowley shakes his head. “Don’t have the juice I need to miracle up the right forms, I imagine. And, besides, I don’t think we should stick around.”

Agnes sips her orange juice. “No?”

Crowley frowns at her. “If you’ve some sort of divination to share, share it.”

Agnes shakes her head. “I’m afraid not. I never tend to see much of anything more than a few days in advance. Nothing clear, at any rate. I can understand why you feel keeping on the move might be better for you both. But, truly, what sort of life will that be for you? Or him, especially?”

Crowley rubs his hands over his face. “Don’t have a lot of choice. I’m keeping him as hidden as I can, and I’m hardly on anyone’s radar as powered down as I am. Even so, that won’t keep someone with good luck and good eyes from finding us by sight. The longer we stay stationary, the bigger of a target we make. I can’t risk him.”

“Do you truly believe that Heaven would harm him?”

Crowley throws an arch look her way.

She shrugs. “I suppose you’d know better than I.”

“Ms. Agnes!” Adam exclaims. He comes running toward them, something clasped in his hands. “Look what I found in your green, over there.”

Agnes and Crowley both lean forward obligingly. Adam opens his clasped hands and reveals a large, lovely moth captured between his palms. It has a bent wing.

“Is it hurt?” Adam asks, seeming to notice the wing for the first time. “Did I squish it?” The boy’s bottom lip trembles at the thought.

“Oh, no, dearie,” Agnes assures him. “I’m sure he had a bit of trouble and ran into the window sill or something like. He’ll be fine.”

Adam races around Agnes’s chair to Crowley, resting his cupped hands on the demon’s knee. “Look. He’s hurt. Will you fix it, please?”

Crowley closes his eyes. He swallows hard but nods.

“Yeah, kid,” he agrees. “C’mere.” Crowley pulls Adam’s small fists into his own, marveling at how his hands absolutely gulf the boy’s. The demon focuses on the small, fluttering life between Adam’s palms and nudges a bit of power from deep down in his very core into the tiny beast. Adam and Crowley gasp in tandem--Adam in delight, Crowley in pain.

Adam opens his hands and gives a delighted cry as the moth flies away, dancing in the air all around the apartment with Adam chasing blissfully after.

Crowley wraps an arm tight around his abdomen as if to smother the burning ache that suddenly gnaws at him like a devastating hunger. His head pounds and his vision, for a moment, goes scattered and white.

With an effort, he focuses on his wings. There is power stored away in the wings of demons and angels. Wings are the dimensional representation of their essences, all spread through sinews and feathers, hid away from mortal sight on the ethereal plane. Drawing on them for energy is a last resort, the sort of thing a creature of Crowley’s ilk should never resort to except in the most dire of circumstances.

He tugs. Power fills the hollow, gnawing hole in himself just enough to ease the agony of it. His headache recedes, and his vision clears. Unseen by mortal eyes, a smattering of the demon’s downy feathers go fluttering into nothingness and disappear from all planes material and otherwise. 

Agnes watches him with wide eyes. She may know the near future and therefore have a grasp on many wonders, but she’s at a loss, now. “What did you just do?”

Crowley gestures to Adam with his chin. The boy continues to chase his new friend about, laughing. “Nothing,” the demon says, faintly. “Made a kid happy, I guess.”

\--

Crowley remembers grabbing at Cain’s arm.

He remembers Cain, hot with fury and indignation, as full of rage as any seven-year-old child could be (hard to determine, really, since Cain was one of the first seven-year-old children to ever exist, but the point still stands). He remembers Cain’s fist, raising high, bolstered by his pain, ready to fall down on Abel’s thick head.

He remembers Abel’s wide, horrified eyes, his total confusion in the face of the inevitable to come.

He remembers halting that fist. He remembers, as if it were yesterday, the words that fell from his lips: Cain! We do not hurt those whom we love.

He remembers that moment. Much later, in the aftermath, he wonders if Cain had ever remembered it, too.

\--

Tidy and clothed and fed, Crowley and Adam leave Agnes’s small flat with a satchel. The satchel holds five-hundred pounds, a map, and a tin of chocolate biscuits. When they say goodbye, Agnes hugs Crowley and Adam with equal closeness. 

“If you need anything, I’ve written my number on the map,” she tells Crowley. “Don’t be afraid to use it. I mean it.”

Crowley rubs at his neck. Adam is aways off, bidding his moth friend farewell. “Listen, what you said about saving the world. Do you really think--I mean, Adam being what he is--.”

Agnes’s eyes go grave. “I think there’s reason to try.”

Crowley, always cynical, can not bring himself to agree. Instead, he touches her hand lightly with his fingertips. The world goes hazy for a brief moment as he gives her a tiny portion of his wing-based reserves. “You might need that, someday,” he tells her, slurring slightly. “Use it wisely.”

Agnes nods and thanks him in a quiet, awed kind of voice.

Crowley shivers. A few of his feathers disappear, unheeded. “Hey, kid. Time to hit the road.”

Adam runs at him and immediately demands to be picked up. Crowley groans but does so readily enough. “Say goodbye, Adam.”

Adam grins at Agnes and waves a hand. “‘Bye, Adam!” he jokes, and then laughs loudly at his own jest.

\--

Crowley walks with Adam through the small hamlet and out into the big, wide world. He walks until Adam fusses about being hungry, at which point they walk into a nearby village and scrounge up a grocers that looks cheap enough to suit. Crowley buys another satchel and enough non-perishables to full it up to the top. He hands Adam a cereal bar and a small bottle of juice and allows the boy to devour the scant meal before they travel on. 

As the sun starts to set, Adam whines about aching feet. Crowley picks him up. Then Adam, cranky for want of sleep and a proper meal and his _own bed_ (“but _why_ ” he asks, repeatedly, when Crowley tells him they can’t go home), whines to be put back on his feet again. They carry on as such for a good hour before Adam, in Crowley’s arms, finally falls asleep there. 

Crowley plods on, thanking all the stars for his inherent demonic ability to see in the dark; as long as the moon is there to provide at least a morsel of light, he can keep on.

Crowley continually finds his undistracted thoughts drifting to Aziraphale. Was the angel all right? Had Heaven been upset by his obvious intrusion? Was he hurt? Was he alone? Was he sorry for what he’d done?

Crowley gives his head a shake. It doesn’t matter. It can’t matter.

Adam snuffles softly, burrowing deeper into Crowley’s embrace.

\--

In the morning, Adam stirs just after dawn and complains immediately of needing breakfast and a pee. The latter Crowley provides by shooing the boy off toward a handy bit of roadside brush. The former, he pulls forth from his satchel when the boy comes back.

Adam makes a speculative and rather skeptical face at what he is being handed. “For breakfast?”

Crowley raises a brow at him. “S’not much different than a muffin, is it?”

Adam takes that statement as logical, apparently, because he eats the jaffa cake without further confusion or complaint. 

He wants picked up again.

“Do me a favor,” Crowley says, in the same reasonable tone he’s used with Adam since the antichrist was no more than an oddly obliging baby, “Walk, first. When you get too tired to keep on, I’ll pick you up.”

Adam nods. The boy takes Crowley’s hand. It’s a bit of a stretch for both of them, but that’s all right.

While they walk to who knows where to do who knows what, Crowley asks Adam the same question he’s always asked whenever they play hide-and-seek. “Where’ve you been, Adam?”

Adam thinks on it for a while. “I went to Antarctica. There were seals.”

“Were there indeed?”

“Yes. Big, fat seals. They made sounds!” And then Adam made seal noises for a good half a mile.

“Where else did you go?” Crowley questions as the noise dies down.

“France.”

“And what was there?”

Adam makes a thoughtful, scrunched up sort of face. “Mmm, dogs, mostly? Fluffy ones.”

“Poodles?” Crowley hazards, with a smirk.

Adam nods. 

A silence falls, comfortably, between them. Then Adam asks a question that Crowley has been expecting and dreading for hours.

“When’s Aziraphale gonna show up?”

Crowley squeezes Adam’s hand a bit too tightly. “Maybe later,” he lies.

“Where did Aziraphale go?”

“Somewhere important. He had to.”

“Oh.”

Adam suddenly tugs all his weight on Crowley’s arm, his usual way of demanding to be held. Crowley sighs and stops, pulling the boy up with no small bit of scramble. Adam is heavy, and Crowley’s arms are tired.

“Can you sing me a song?”

Crowley winces. Aziraphale usually covers the singing part of parenting. It’s one of the few things the angel will do willingly and with marginal fuss (that and read the bedtime stories, but Aziraphale always picks the most boring books possible; to be fair, they do put Adam immediately to sleep).

“Why don’t you sing me one, instead?”

Adam shrugs. “Okay.” And he throws himself heartily into a piece that it takes Crowley a good twenty stanzas to recognize as one of Aziraphale’s old lullabies, taken to eleven and slaughtered beyond recognition. 

Crowley catches the beat and the repeating chorus, eventually, and hums the harmony just to keep himself awake.

\--

At lunchtime or near abouts, they wander into another small town. Crowley has lost track of where they are. He could use the map, of course, but it seems useless. They have no particular destination in mind, after all. 

Crowley ushers Adam into a family-friendly looking pub. He exchanges money for two big glasses of ice water and a hamburger with chips for the kid. Adam wolfs it down with so much obvious eagerness that Crowley feels a pang of guilt for how hungry the boy must be. 

They can’t just keep wandering the world, like this. Adam is growing. He needs stability and education and a heap of good, responsible things that Crowley, as his guardian, ought to provide. 

While Adam eats, Crowley starts looking more seriously at the map. There has to be somewhere that neither Heaven nor Hell will think of to find them, at least not for a year or two.

It’s funny, really, when he realizes the most obvious option available to them.

\--

There’s a dead zone in Cardiff. Why it’s there or what created it or when it spluttered into existence, Crowley doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. He just remembers hearing, once, that there’s a radius in Cardiff that neither Heaven nor Hell nor mortal eye can see. Their gazes drift away whenever they try.

The place, when mentioned in whispers and bits of story and song, is called Purgatory. 

Crowley frowns at the piece of paper in his hands and idly shifts Adam’s weight on his hip. The kid yawns into Crowley’s shoulder, more asleep than awake. It’s been a long, slow slog to get here. Assuming “here” is the right place at all.

The wide alley, crammed full of shaded vendor tables (currently empty, due to the hour) and various debris, looks mundane enough. Crowley follows the line of tables and finally reaches a door in the brick walls that matches the description he’d been given. He knocks.

A long, ominous silence answers. He knocks again, mind already whirling with back up plans. If they can’t find shelter in Purgatory, they’ll have to keep on the run. 

The door opens, stymied by the chain across it. An eye peeks out, suspicious. 

“What do you want?”

Crowley shifts Adam’s weight again. “Uh...sanctuary?”

A snort. “Is that a question or a request?”

Crowley clears his throat. “Sanctuary,” he says again, more firmly. 

“Fine, then. Come in.”

The door slams in his face. The chain rattles in its holster and then the door opens wide. Crowley steps briskly in before anyone can change their minds. 

Their saviour is a short, round being with shiny silver hair. Her features are largely goat-like, the most stunning of which are her massive, curling horns. She frowns up at Crowley and then her eyes flicker over to Adam and her expression goes abruptly soft.

“We don’t ask questions,” she says, “And we expect the same from anyone who stays. You understand?”

Crowley nods. He’s desperate, at this point. He’ll do whatever is required, as long as Adam remains healthy and safe.

She hums, the noise ending on a faint bleating sound. “I’m Eurie. I manage the place. You have a problem or a question, you come to me. Don’t bother the other patrons. It’s rude. How long you want to stay?”

Crowley shifts from one foot to another. Adam is heavy. His arms are throbbing. He’s carried the boy for the past four hours, at least. The ward over the boy’s skin, shielding his strong demonic aura from prying eyes, needs a boosting and soon. “As long as we possibly can.”

Eurie’s eyes narrow. “You going to bring trouble down on us?”

Crowley’s lips twitch up. “Isn’t that a question?”

Eurie sniffs. “Fair enough. Fine, then. Long-term patrons gotta work for their keep. You going to fuss about that?”

“No.”

“Good. Follow, then.”

Crowley obediently follows behind the goat woman, careful not to outpace her. His legs are much longer than hers. 

She leads them all through the hidden building. It’s a strange mix of soup kitchen and hostel. Downstairs is all functional--the combined kitchen and dining area is here as well as a big meeting space full of comfortable chairs arranged in a big circle. There are bookshelves on the walls. They are mostly bare. Eurie totters up a long, straight staircase that leads them to a long hallway branching out on either side of it. The hallways are thick with doors. Most of the doors have placards on them that say “occupied” as well as identifying numbers. Eurie takes them to a room on the far end of the hall that is marked as number 177 and appears unoccupied. She unlocks the door with a wave of her hand. (She has humanoid digits, though they are suspiciously furry). 

“Door’ll open to you and the boy, now, too,” she mutters, leading them in. It’s a small suite, taken up mostly by the bedroom with its single enormous bed. There’s an attached bath and a small area with an in-built desk and a single chair and lamp to go with it.

“Meal times are on the pamphlet, there. We can talk about what your duties will be in the morning, I suspect. You got a name you wanna give me?”

Crowley swallows. He had not considered that. “Crowley is fine,” he decides. It’s Purgatory. If the demons or angels are close enough to ask his name, it will already be too late. “And this is Adam.”

Eurie nods. “Nice to meet you.”

“Thank you,” Crowley says, as she turns to go. “For your help.”

Eurie lifts a shoulder. “S’what the place is for,” she replies, and leaves them.

Crowley shifts Adam onto the bed, groaning as his muscles twinge in sharp protest. While Adam continues to sleep peacefully, Crowley passes a hand over him, pulling power from his wings into the ward over the kid’s body. The demon sinks to the floor afterward, vision spotty and breath coming in deep gasps. A smattering of his feathers disappear, but he doesn’t notice and likely wouldn’t care if he did.

Now that they are stable, he hopes to keep his miracles to a minimum and, perhaps, build up some power reserves again. If he can just manage to keep frantic pulls from his wings to a minimum in the future, that will be enough. It won’t do any to wear himself out entirely--there is no one else to look after Adam, once he is gone.

\--

Crowley awakes in the middle of the night that evening to Adam poking him in a face with a finger. 

“I’m hungry.”

Crowley mumbles something indistinct and rolls onto his stomach, burying his face into the pillows.

Adam climbs on top of him, sitting on his back. Crowley’s spine pops. It actually feels quite good.

“Hunnnngry,” Adam declares, prodding Crowley’s ears with his fingers. “I’m hungry!”

“Satchel,” Crowley mumbles at the boy.

“Where?”

“Floor,” Crowley grumbles. His arms grasp about uselessly behind him, trying to locate some piece of the boy he can grab and shunt off. 

Adam rolls off of Crowley, causing all the air to rush out of the demon’s lungs. Crowley can hear Adam drop to the floor and pad over to the desk where the satchel sits. He tugs it off the table to the floor with another thud. A quiet rustling of wrapped junk foods ensues.

“I want something hot to eat,” Adam declares. 

Crowley groans. He sits up slowly, blearily glancing at the digital clock on the slatboard nightstand. It’s well past three in the morning. “Nothin’ open,” Crowley informs the boy, falling back onto the mattress.

“Make it,” Adam says, imperiously. He’s been progressively more difficult, the past few days--too tired and hungry and confused about what is happening to him to be anything but cranky. 

Crowley sighs. He waves a hand. A tray appears on the desk with a bowl of hot chicken and stars soup, a bit of bread and butter, and a tall glass of milk on it. “T’go,” Crowley slurs out, even as his vision goes wonky and a soft, prickly kind of pain appears for the first time along his wings. He ignores it and goes back to sleep to the sound of Adam slurping soup.

They’re going to be fine.

\--

Eurie sniffs. “You’ve gotten better at this.”

Crowley blinks up at her. He’s spent most of the morning under the sink of the communal kitchen, wrestling a leaky pipe into order. It’s no longer leaking, though Crowley himself is soaked and tired for the effort. He offers Eurie a grin. “Well, that’s better than getting worse at it, I suppose.”

Eurie hum-bleats her agreement. “I didn’t think you’d make it,” she tells him, in her usual matter-of-fact way. “Coming in with your fancy shades and that boy. Figured you’d be difficult. Not do the work. Cause trouble with the other patrons. That kind of thing.”

Crowley isn’t sure how to respond to that, exactly. “We just want to stay as long as we can,” he says, slowly. He feels like Eurie is hinting at something, and he fears it might be a dismissal.

His mind churns, pulling up back up plans just as they had that first day. Nearly a year ago, now. It’s possible his intended Plan B is no longer remotely viable, after so long.

“Calm down,” Eurie remarks. She sets one of her furry hands on his shoulder, frowning at him. “I’m only trying to give you a compliment.”

Crowley breathes out in a rush. “So you aren’t going to give us the boot?”

Eurie shrugs. “Not today.”

Crowley nods, overwhelmed with relief. “I should, er. I should get started on that dinner prep, then.”

Eurie tilts her head at him, watching him scramble to his feet. He hisses softly, stretching his arms out and then hugging them tightly around his shoulders, forcing his back muscles to shift and stretch. The ache of his wings is so consistent, now, that he barely notices it. But it’s hell on his back, the way he has to carry himself to keep the ache manageable. 

“Oi, Crowley,” a voice calls, causing both Eurie and Crowley to gaze across the kitchen into the connected dining area. Yix--a perfectly normal human, as far as Crowley has ever been able to suss out--waves zir hand in them in greeting. 

Yix tutors Adam and the more transient young Purgatory patrons. Zir work is solid. Adam has learned a lot under zir tutelage, even if it is a chore and a half to get the kid to do his homework in a timely fashion (Adam seems to love learning, but he hates the busywork element of practical application). 

“Hi, Yix. How’s the kid?”

“All right. He was my only student, today. The Mulborns shipped out for greener pastures this morning, and the Della twins are out with head colds or some such. Since we had so much quality time one-on-one, we’re done early. Do you want me to send him your way?”

Crowley makes a face. “Yeah. I think some kind of noodle dish is on the menu, tonight. He can peel garlic until the cows come home.”

Yix grins knowingly. Adam has no doubt complained vehemently about the fact that Crowley won’t let the boy use a knife (or weapon of any kind), even just to help make meals. Purgatory is a strange place, drawing in strange folks. Weapons--though never used except in sparring--are not an uncommon sight. 

Adam appears a while later, grinning broadly and geared up to tell Crowley all about mystifying topics such as how to diagram a sentence and some fancy new way of doing maths that Yix has taught him. Crowley’s never had real schooling. He isn’t a reader, either. What he’s learned he’s acquired mostly via osmosis from six thousand years, on and off, of having Aziraphale nattering in his ear. Nattering much as Adam is now, in fact. 

After ensuring the boy washes his hands, Crowley swallows back the ache in his throat and gamely points Adam in the direction of a big pile of garlic cloves and a trash bag. “Get to work, kid.”

Adam tackles the task with no complaint, for once, too wrapped up in talking about this and that and the other. Crowley breathes a sigh of relief. Fixing up the sink and his other daily tasks have left him sore and tired. He’s in no state to participate in any arguments with the kid on top of all that.

“An’ then Yix said that--ow!”

Crowley goes immediately still at his place at the counter, determinedly chopping big sections of beef into smaller chunks. He sets down his knife and turns to Adam, who has two of his fingers stuck in his mouth, sucking on them.

“What happened?” Crowley demands, eyes flickering around the room. It doesn’t take much in the way of occult insight to sort it out, however. Adam is standing near the warming pan on the stove. He must have gotten too close. “Hey. What have I said about getting near the oven?”

“M’not supposed to,” Adam mumbles around his fingers, rather miserably. Crowley sighs and takes pity on the kid.

“Let me see, then.”

Adam pulls his saliva-wet fingers out for inspection. Two long, blistering burns arise new and angry red down the expanse of his pointer and middle fingers. “Ouch,” Crowley says, in sympathy. “So, what did we learn from this experience?”

“Don’t touch the stove,” Adam sighs. 

Crowley nods. “Exactly right.” Crowley smooths his fingers in the air over Adam’ damp ones. Crowley blinks back the resulting spots and ignores the way the prickly ache in his wings flares. “Go wash your hands again. And stay where I put you, huh?”

“Okay,” Adam agrees, obviously cowed. When he comes back from washing his hands at the sink, Crowley ruffles his hair in passing.

“No harm done,” he says, gently. Adam is tenderhearted about these things.

Adam’s resulting smile is worth the new strain on Crowley’s posture as the demon hunches over his pots and pans, holding his pained wings in an awkward, cramped position that still provides a measure of relief.

\--

Adam is eight years old and shooting up like a weed. Which is all fine and good, excepting that none of his clothes fit for more than a fortnight, and keeping enough jeans and jumpers on hand is becoming quite the trial. 

Crowley goes to Eurie. While the coordinator of Purgatory will happily trade room and board for work under her roof, she doesn’t pay in cash with which to buy extras. But, Crowley has learned, she might slide some Outsider jobs his way, if asked, and jobs from outside their safe little haven pay in real money. 

“I haven’t got anything I can give you,” Eurie says.

Crowley frowns. Hell had taught him to sniff out hidden meanings. “But you do have _something_?”

Eurie sniffs and continues to sort through the paperwork on her desk, not looking at him. “I do, but it’s not work I’d give to a being with a child to be looking after. It’s dangerous.”

Crowley frowns, mulling this over. “Dangerous in a way that pays?”

She meets his eye and then, after a beat of hesitation, nods. “Quite a lot.”

“Enough to keep a kid in proper-fitting trousers for a few months?”

“For a few years, I’d think.”

Crowley holds out his hand to her. “I’ll take it.”

\--

It’s an easy kind of task, on paper. On paper, he needs to leave Purgatory (something he’s done before _only_ for work such as this) and travel out of Cardiff to London. He’s playing courier, traveling to a specific address in the city to pick up a parcel from a man who will be wearing an embellishment on his lapel in the shape of two entangled cats. Once the package is in his hands, he will return to Purgatory and deliver the item to Eurie, who will most likely be passing the item on to one of her other patrons. The problems in reality are largely related to the details. Leaving Purgatory is always a risk. Leaving Purgatory to travel to London is two-fold in its complications; first, that he will effectively be returning to a place where his enemies will expect him and second that the trip from Cardiff to London is long enough that between travel time and doing the deed itself, he’ll be gone for a large chunk of the day, leaving Adam alone.

“I’ll keep a good eye on him,” Yix promises, patting Crowley’s shoulder in a comradely fashion, and that will have to be enough. 

Crowley crouches before Adam--but not as much as he used to have to--and ruffles his hair. Adam scowls, righting his hair again with a palm. Crowley grins at him, unrepentant. 

“You’re gonna behave, right?” Crowley asks.

Adam shrugs, noncommittal.

“Hey,” Crowley says. “I’ll bring you back something cool from London. How’s that?”

Adam, still frowning, thaws slightly. “How cool?”

“Really cool.”

Adam sniffs softly and then finally nods. “Okay, I guess.”

Crowley runs his hands over Adam’s arms, re-boosting the ward over his skin, just in case. He flinches slightly as something warm seeps down the edge of his wing as a result. He covers the moment with a small cough. “All right, then. Have a good day. I should be back before bedtime.”

Adam nods. Crowley stands and turns to go and lets out an “oof” of surprise as Adam throws himself forward, clinging hard around Crowley’s midriff in a hug.

“Hey,” Crowley says, softly, swallowing the sudden lump in his throat. “This is fine. We’re good, right?”

If Adam says ‘no,’ Crowley will cancel this job immediately, no hesitation. He can scrounge up the money he needs some other way, he’s sure. He can. Maybe he can just miracle some up for a while, his wings be damned.

Adam squeezes and then lets go, stepping back. He sniffs, but his eyes are dry. “We’re good.”

“Great.” And Crowley ruffles Adam’s golden hair again before leaving, leaving the kid to cry out in frustration behind him. Crowley grins.

\--

Crowley fidgets relentlessly in his seat on the train to London. Over the years, he’s developed a chronic pain in his back, centralized over his scapulas and often drifting down his spine and sides, making his muscles tight and aching. Sitting in one position for a long while is torturous. He shifts in his seat and twists his spine, hunching forward so the muscles over his shoulder blades pull tight. Something pops, but the relief that gives is temporary at best.

He can feel his wings almost constantly, now. Aching from root to tip, a persistent pain that feels sharp like a sunburn on his better days and like dousing them in fire on his worst. He hasn’t dared to pull them forth, to manifest them in physical reality along with his corporation. He doesn’t expect he’d like what’s there to see--or, more accurately, _not_ there.

Replenishing Adam’s ward every day drains the demon’s restored power. Once that’s gone, all he has in reserve is what he can pull violently from his wings. As a result, he keeps the miracling to a minimum. But there are some things--mostly things involving Adam’s well being and happiness--that require a bit of occult intervention. 

As the train barrels toward London, Crowley sends an idle, thoughtless prayer to whoever might listen to the hopes of demons that no extreme lengths will be required to perform his current assignment.

\--

It’s worse than he could have possibly ever imagined.

Not because it’s dangerous. Not because it requires excessive miracling. Not because it’s complicated or anything else. 

It’s worse because the man sitting in a dark, hole-in-the-wall pub in London with a paper-wrapped parcel in hand and a gold pin feature two cats with their tails intertwined is Aziraphale, wearing a very familiar old white jacket and a lavender waistcoat. He hasn’t spotted Crowely, yet, but he will as soon as he glances up from the pocket watch in his hand.

Crowley hovers uselessly in place, unable to bring himself to turn back and even more unable to step forward.

Aziraphale looks up. He looks over. His eyes go wide.

Crowley strides over in three long steps and slides into the booth across from the angel. “ _Don’t_ be obvious,” the demon hisses out in reminder.

Aziraphale swallows, expression pained. Obligingly he whispers a low “Hello, Crowley.”

Crowley stares at him, unable to find the words. What does he possibly start with, in this situation? ‘Glad you’re in one piece?’ ‘How bloody dare you?’ ‘I missed you?’ ‘I hate you?’ ‘What are you doing here, doing this?’

Aziraphale’s hands flutter nervously over the parcel on the table. “Uhm, so. How is Adam doing, these days?”

Crowley bristles. His wings flare invisibly out behind him in irritation. The movement makes him cringe in pain, something Aziraphale doesn’t fail to notice.

“Are you--?” the angel starts.

“You don’t get to ask that. You don’t get to ask me anything. You’re just going to hand me that package and let me on my way.”

Aziraphale blinks. “ _You’re_ my contact?”

Crowley snarls, pulling up his cuff and revealing the gold watch on his wrist, inset with a pale pink face. It’s how Eurie had said the demon would be recognized by the man he was to meet.

Aziraphale frowns. “My dear, whatever are you doing wrapped up in--?”

“No. Questionssss,” Crowley hisses.

Aziraphale hesitates. Slowly, he pushes the paper-wrapped item across the table. “Then take it, of course.”

Crowley takes it. It’s rectangular, heavy. Since it’s coming from the angel, it’s most likely a book. But Crowley doesn’t care, over much. He doesn’t care what Aziraphale suspects he’s involved in. He doesn’t care what questions the angel may or may not have. He doesn’t care what the angel has been doing or if he’s all right or--.

“Are--,” Aziraphale takes a breath, altering his question into a statement. “You seem to be in pain.”

Crowley tries and fails to straighten up, to stop stooping over like an old, creaky mortal creature. He wings are far too heavy and conspicuous on his aching back to do so. “It’s fine. I’m fine. Thanks. See you.” He stands to go.

Aziraphale’s fingers brush, feather light, against Crowley’s cuff. “Please. Stay? Just--for a drink.”

Crowley shakes his head. “You...take care, all right?”

And he leaves as quickly as he can.

On the train back to Cardiff, the demon clutches the wrapped book like the most precious treasure on the planet, knuckles white with tension, mind racing with thoughts too scattered and multitudinous to name--but almost all of them about Aziraphale and the way that seeing him, even briefly, leaves something raw and painful thrumming in his chest.

\--

Adam can no longer be easily carried, nor does he ask to be, but Crowely thinks about those old, happy days more and more as the kid grows and starts to drift further away. He’s eleven and, thanks to a few more permanent families wandering into Purgatory and taking root a year or so back, he has friends his own age with which to spend his time.

His power has also grown--double if not triplefold. Crowley can remember the acid taste of Satan’s own ability well enough to guess that Adam has reached his full potentially, now--if not entirely, than enough to make the demon worried. He hasn’t seen any signs in Adam or otherwise, yet, that indicate the oncoming End of Days. Even so, keeping the antichrist underwraps is more difficult than ever. The people of Purgatory are starting to notice it, in fact, though (to Crowley’s extreme relief) they mostly tend to pass it off as good charisma and odd luck. 

One morning, not too long after Adam’s eleventh birthday, Crowley goes to boost the wards and ends up blacking out, as he hasn’t done since Adam was a baby. One moment he’s wiggling his fingers over the kid as Adam rouses himself out of their bed and the next the world goes utterly silent and dark. 

He wakes to Adam’s voice calling his name, frantic and high, the boy’s hand on his shoulder, shaking him roughly away. Crowley’s wings burn as if doused in the sulphur pits of Hell, and his back spasms, muscles refusing to unclench. Breathing in such a state is a difficulty, though he manages it enough to wheeze something he hopes is comforting Adam’s way.

“I’m going to get help!” Adam yells. Crowley snatches the boy’s wrist, holding him back.

“S’k,” Crowley croaks. “Hel-help me up.”

“But-!”

“Help me.”

Adam, brows drawn, mouth twisting down in concern, does as asked. His arm around Crowley’s back is awful, like a branding iron, but they still manage it. Crowley rests himself against the bed frame, panting raggedly for a few minutes. They sit together on the floor, staring at each other. 

“You have to stop,” Adam says, his voice a mere whisper, his eyes very wide indeed.

“What’re you--?”

“Whatever you do every day, to me. You have to stop doing it.”

Crowley blinks. “I didn’t--.”

“I’m not stupid,” Adam snaps. “M’not a dumb little kid. It--it tingles, kind of, besides. What is it?”

Crowley swallows thickly. For some reason, he’d never expected to have this conversation with the kid. “A ward.”

“A protection spell?” Adam asks, curiously. There’s been all sorts of magic users go in and out of Purgatory over the years. And Adam is right: He’s not stupid at all. Plus, he loves to talk to people and learn more about who they are and what they do. Crowley had never thought it necessary to stop him. Adam was not allowed to truly experience the world. The least he could provide the boy was a chance to glimpse it through the eyes of others.

“Protection. A disguise.”

“Why?”

Crowley goes silent. Can he tell Adam the truth? Will it do harm to the Plan? Will it do good for Adam himself?

“I’m not sure if I should tell you,” Crowley admits. 

Adam frowns. “Is it that bad? I remember...we used to live in a cottage, right? We ran away. Something came after me.” The boy looks at his fingers as if he suspects they belong to a stranger. “Am I something bad?”

Crowley shivers, horrified by the question. “No! No. Never. You’re not all bad or all good. You’re just--you’re just Adam.”

Adam looks at him with a wry glance. “Do most ‘just Adams’ need wards, like me? Purgatory is for people who are hidin’. I figured that out real early, and I don’t mind it. But I always--I never thought about _why_ we were hiding, before.”

Crowley closes his eyes. He can’t look at Adam as he says, dully, “You’re the antichrist. The son of Satan himself. Those people that came to take you away, they were angels.”

Adam takes his in, thoughtful. “The antichrist is bad, isn’t he? He--he ends the world.”

Crowley opens his eyes again, meets Adam’s intently. “Not you. You won’t do that.”

“Why does putting the ward on me hurt you so bad?”

Crowley lifts a shoulder and grimaces, regretting the motion. “I’m only one demon, and not a very high-ranking one, at that. Your powers have grown steadily since you were a baby. It takes more juice, year after year.”

Adam’s unhappy expression deepens. “I’m sorry. I didn’t--I don’t wanna hurt you.”

“I don’t want _you_ to get hurt. It’s worth it. Adam, it’s always been worth it. _You_ have always been worth it.”

Adam sighs. Slowly, for the first time in what feels like ages, the boy comes up to Crowley and snuggles up against him. Crowley loops him into a one-armed hug, an instinctual motion born of years of practice. 

“You’re always lookin’ out for me. Never thought about it, a lot. Figured that’s just what dads do.”

Crowley blinks. “You’ve never called me--.”

“You never taught me to. And you never asked, later. So I didn’t. But you are, aren’t you? My dad?”

Crowley’s eyes, horrifyingly, go rather wet. “Uhm. Yeah. Sure.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “You’re hopeless.” A pause. Then, carefully. “You’re a demon?”

Crowley snorts. “Yeah. What’d you think?”

“Dunno. You do magic like some of the folks what come through, but most of them are wizards and witches and creatures and the like. You never seemed much like a human, for sure. With your eyes and how you get all hissy sometimes, I figured you might be a basilisk. But Yix says they don’t exist.”

“I’m a snake, deep down,” Crowley admits. “I’m the Serpent of Eden, though I haven’t gone by that title pretty much since Eden went away.”

Adam considers this. Crowley isn’t sure how much more biblical learning the boy has had since those early years listening to Aziraphale’s and his stories. Even so, he must be somewhat familiar because he says, idly, “You hate apples.”

Crowley smiles slightly. “Yeah.”

“Makes sense.”

They sit in silence for a while, just holding on to each other.

Finally, Adam fidgets, glancing up at Crowley. “Why not just let me do it?”

“Do what?” Crowley asks.

“You said you’re covering my tracks, right? ‘Cos I’m noticeable. ‘Cos I’ve got a lot of power? So, why not let me use it? I can hide myself, can’t I, if you show me how?”

Crowley stares at him. It had never once occurred to the demon that Adam might be able to _use_ some of his massive, ever-building power for his own or anyone’s benefit. Crowley hadn’t quite thought that Adam was old enough, grounded enough, prepared enough….

“You’ve grown up,” Crowley notes, surprised. “When’d you do that?”

Adam rolls his eyes, pinching Crowley’s knee lightly. “ _Ages_ ago. So? Can I?”

Crowley nods. “Yeah, actually. I think you probably can.”

\--

Adam comes up to him a few days after his birthday. “I think I felt something go all fidgety in me,” he says, seriously. “But I told it to stop, and it did.”

And the very next day, Adam appears with a small terrier in his arms.

Crowley blinks at it, very slowly. “Uh. Hellhound?” He guesses. He and Aziraphale had both read up extensively on portents and whatnot regarding antichrists, in those early years.

Adam nods. “Mmhm. His name is Dog.”

Crowley makes a face. “Better go ask Eurie what the policy is on pets.”

\--

Adam controls his own wards. And, as no one appears to slaughter them immediately, Crowley figures the kid must be doing a bang up job. 

For the first time in years, Crowley’s inherent power is allowed to collect inside of his very self, growing steadily with each passing day of rest. 

Adam catches him miracling the dishes clean after lunch, one day, and actually stomps his foot in irritation. “ _Stop_ it.”

Crowley has the grace to look ashamed. “Old habits,” he excuses.

Adam picks up a dish towel and pushes a soapy glass into Crowley’s hands. “Just _wash_.”

\--

Adam turns twelve. His power burns bright as a candle in Crowley’s sight, but no one else ever sees or feels it. Adam doesn’t deign to use his abilities, either, as far as Crowley can see. He boosts his own wards and that’s the limit of it.

“We could take them on a test drive,” Crowley offers, too curious to resist. 

Adam shoots him a look. “It’s fine. I don’t want to. I’m taking Dog for a walk.”

Crowley shakes his head. “No way, kid. We’ve talked about this. I don’t care how strong your ward is--you don’t go outside alone.”

Adam sighs. “So go with us, then.”

Crowley glances at the small terrier bouncing around his feet. He’s not especially fond of Dog, but he knows Adam loves the mutt with all his heart. Better to take good care of the creature than not. “Fine. Let me get our coats.”

\--

Crowley hunches his shoulders up to his ears as they step out of the protective alley of Purgatory and into the wider city. There’s a park not far away, and their standard practice is to walk to the park, let Dog chase around for an hour or so, and then go back. Crowley glances up at the sky. It’s clear and blue. Besides the slight chill in the air, it’s a beautiful day.

Crowley sits on a bench and watches the world go by. Adam and Dog go chasing off across the grass, playing an intense game of tag. Crowley closes his eyes and keeps Adam on his radar; warded or not, Crowley could spot that aura miles away.

“Oh dear.”

Crowley’s eyes snap open at the familiar voice. He turns in his seat and stares, shocked, at Aziraphale. “What are you doing here?”

It’s been four years since they last spoke. Aziraphale, predictably, looks exactly the same as he has for the last few hundred years. Even the look of wide-eyed concern on his face is familiar in every line. Crowley clears his throat and forcibly looks away from the angel, focusing on the sight of Adam and Dog, instead.

Aziraphale follows his gaze as he replies to the sharp question. “I-I. I’m on assignment in the city. I just thought I’d stop and-and enjoy the sights. Is that--?”

Crowley shoots the angel a sidelong look. “You just stay away from him, all right?”

Aziraphale’s shoulders droop. “My dear boy, I am so sorry. What I did was inexcusable.”

“Damn right.”

The angel doesn’t seem to know what to say to that.

Adam pauses in his roughhousing with Dog. He looks over at Crowley and stops, obviously sensing trouble. He raises a hand in question.

Crowley raises his back, flicking his wrist in a ‘go on’ gesture. Adam hesitates but then does as indicated, throwing a stick for Dog to fetch. 

“He looks well,” Aziraphale offers, cautiously.

“He is.”

“You--.”

“What did you do, after?” Crowley interrupts. “After you sold us out to Heaven and chased us out of _our home_ , what did you do?”

Aziraphale swallows audibly. “May I sit?”

Crowley hesitates, tempted to rebuff him. But then he nods and scoots over, leaving plenty of room between himself and the angel to fester.

“I was retrieved, for a time. Heaven had many questions, and I had very few answers. Once they’d determined as much, they sent me back to my post.” A pause. “I wanted to--I thought I could find you both. But I failed.”

“We found someplace safe,” Crowley grits out, despite himself. 

Aziraphale shifts his weight uncomfortably. He doesn’t press, at least.

“It’s good to see you,” the angel says, meekly.

Crowley glances at him and then away. “Yeah.” He agrees.

“I have been considering transferring to Cardiff, for a time. It could be good to spread my wings somewhere new, for a while.”

Crowley can hear the statement for what it is, a tentative question. Not a request for forgiveness as much as a request to not lose something in which both of them have invested so much of themselves.

“That’d be good for you, I think,” Crowley says, after a long pause.

Aziraphale breathes out a shaken sigh of utter relief. “Yes. Quite.”

\--

Adam approaches a while later, holding Dog, who rarely ever has enough energy after their trips to the park to walk home on his own four paws. Adam’s expression flickers to one of confusion and then brutal, open shock as he recognizes Aziraphale. 

Crowley stands, stuffing his hands awkwardly into his pockets. “Adam. This is--.”

“--Aziraphale,” Adam says, soft with wonder. “Wow. I didn’t--I wasn’t sure I hadn’t made you up, actually.”

Aziraphale seems pained by this statement. As perhaps he well might, as it makes it clear that Crowley has not so much as mentioned Aziraphale to Adam in a very long time. 

“Is he a demon, too?” Adam asks Crowley, rather abruptly.

Crowley smirks, his eyes drifting to the angel. He expects a sputtering denial, something righteous and affronted. But Aziraphale only shakes his head. 

“I’m an angel,” Aziraphale says. “An archangel, specifically.”

Crowley turns on his heel, head swiveling toward the angel in a rush. “You what?”

Aziraphale waves a hand at him, eyes still locked on Adam. “I was demoted again. After that messiness in Tadfield. I told you, I couldn’t answer their questions.”

“So they _demoted_ you?” Crowley demands, voice going high in affront on Aziraphale’s behalf, his irritation with the angel quite forgotten. “That’s not fair!”

Adam considers them both. “I’ve missed you,” he says to Aziraphale, bluntly. Aziraphale’s cheeks color noticeably. 

“Yes,” the angel demures. “I missed you, also, dear boy.”

“I’m warding myself, now, did you tell you?” Adam asks, eyes drifting to Crowley and back on ‘he’.

Aziraphale’s eyes go wide. “Good Lord, really?”

Adam nods. “An’ I was supposed to start up everything last year, I think. But I didn’t. Got a Dog, though!” He lifts up the sleepy terrier to support his point.

Aziraphale turns in his seat, staring up at Crowley. “You did it. You really stopped the apocalypse.” 

Crowley shrugs. “Delayed it, at least. He’s got all right control. Should be okay, moving forward, long as he doesn’t get any ideas.”

Adam makes a face. “So cynical.”

Crowley just smirks. He’s proud, and he can’t help but show it. “Yeah. Anyway. He’s doing great.”

Aziraphale beams at them both in turn. “Well! That’s really wonderful.”

And, Crowley has to admit, it really is.

\--

It’s a year of meetings and dinners and catching each other up before Aziraphale asks the question that has been sitting between them since first reuniting in that park.

“Come to my place,” he offers.

“Oh, I don’t--.”

“There’s a very fine vintage waiting there, if you do.”

“Adam--.”

“Will be fine, I’m sure. You said you have friends who can look after him, didn’t you?”

A year, and Crowley has never so much as _breathed_ a word about Purgatory. Aziraphale has, thankfully, also never asked or pressed the issue. 

Crowley gives in, if only out of a pressing sense of nostalgia. It’s easy to find a phone and call Purgatory, leaving a message with Eurie for Adam, telling him Crowley will be home late and not to wait up.

Aziraphale’s smile is bright. Crowley can’t help but return it.

They had an arrangement for thousands of years, and a friendship (however quiet) along with it. Then, for six whole years, they had lived together, survived together, raised a child together. There was too much between them to not let the more painful parts of their history pass, unremarked. 

Somewhere on their second bottle, Aziraphale touches Crowley’s back, poking him in return for some off-color joke. Crowley hisses and pulls back from the prodding, invasive touch. The angel sits up, abruptly sober. 

“That day in London, I remember. You were holding yourself all stiff. You’ve been doing that, still, except less so. What on earth happened?”

Crowley is tempted to wave the angel off, but he knows Aziraphale, once his teeth are in the bone, won’t stop. “I ran out of reserves.”

Aziraphale opens his mouth and closes it again, confused. Then, horrified understanding slowly dawns across his face. Crowley grimaces, not happy to see that particular expression on the angel’s countenance at any time, but especially not here, now, between the two of them. 

“H-how-my _dear_ , how much have you--?”

Crowley shakes his head. “I don’t know. Every day, I suppose, until last year.”

Aziraphale looks ashen. He takes a large drink from his glass. His hands tremble, but Crowley is wise enough not to remark on it. 

“Well, I shall have to take a look at them.”

Crowley blinks. “What?”

Aziraphale makes a soft, impatient noise. “You’ll need _healing_ , Crowley.”

“Nah. S’fine,” Crowley says, waving his hands, trying to scuttle backward from Aziraphale’s reaching hands. 

“ _Crowley,_ ” Azirapahle says, sounding more than a bit on the verge of _tears_ , which is deeply confusing until--

“This is my fault,” Aziraphale says, choked up. “You never would have needed to do such an insane, irresponsible, _foolish_ thing if I had been there to help carry the load.”

Crowley licks his lips nervously. “Not entirely sure if that was an apology or an insult.”

Aziraphale’s upset expression flickers. “Both, I suppose. Please, dear. Let me look.”

Crowley grabs the remnants of the bottle of wine off the coffee table and drains it. “Mk,” he manages, wetly, afterward. “Just, uhm, maybe more alcohol, first?”

Aziraphale winces and miracles another bottle, handing it over. Crowley drinks it all in a few rough swallows and then, blearily, nods. “M’k,” he repeats. “M’good. Let’s do this.”

Crowley melts off the couch and gets on his hands and knees on the living room floor. Aziraphale tsks softly and miracles the furniture far out of the way, giving the demon plenty of room to spread out. 

“All right, then,” Aziraphale says, standing out of the radius of where Crowley’s wings will stretch. “Whenever you’re ready.”

Crowley will _never_ be ready for this. For one dizzy moment, he wishes Adam were here. But then very quickly he realizes he’s very glad Adam is not.

He manifests his wings. The world gets lost in a haze of agony, of grayed out vision, of someone _yelling_ a terrible, keening grind of pain and--oh. That’s him. 

Crowley bites back on the scream, smothering it down to a low moan in his throat. The muscles of his back are cramping, pain tricking warmly up and down his sides, melting all through his spine. And his _wings_. He can hardly conceptualize the sensation coming from his wings except to know that it’s awful and he hates it. The prickly sensation he’s grown so familiar with roars into his consciousness ten fold. In addition to the searing pain, he feels itchy and sticky and _tight_ in a manner that makes him reflexively try to stretch his wings out wide only to end up screaming again, curling over himself. Wine and bile burn the back of his throat.

It takes him an age to realize that Aziraphale is crouching in front of his face, trying to meet his eyes, talking ceaselessly. Crowley pushes the overwhelming sensations of his pain aside and tries to listen.

“--not alone, I’m here, it’s all right. Just breathe, Crowley. Crowley, listen to me. Breathe through it, if you can. Are you with me?”

Crowley takes a few shuddering breaths, keeping them shallow so as to not irritate his back any further. “M’here,” he manages, in a low whine.

“All right,” Aziraphale says, obviously relieved. “Good. That’s good. Oh, Crowley. Your beautiful wings.”

Crowley hums in vague agreement, though he feels he’s already lost the plot of this conversation.

Aziraphale stands and walks in a wide circle around the demon, surveying the damage properly. Half of his primaries are completely gone. His primary and secondary converts are a mess of damage, some outright missing but more ragged and bent out of shape. Only the lesser converts seem to be all in one piece. Even his scapulars are ragged and thin. The worst part, though, is the blood. Where the feathers have torn and disappeared from Crowley’s body, skin has been left torn and ravaged. Most of those old wounds have scabbed and scarred over, but the blood remains in dry clumps, causing the skin beneath to fester and heal poorly. Aziraphale can see signs of infection seeping from lacerations deep in Crowley’s right-side wing, especially. 

The angel relays this information to Crowley as calmly and matter-of-factly as he can.

Crowley makes soft sounds of acknowledgement until Aziraphale is done. “C’n I pull ‘em in, now?”

“What? No. Crowley, you have to let me heal them.”

Crowley makes a questioning noise. “S’too much miracle,” he argues.

“Yes, for all in one go. We’ll have to meet multiple times, I’m sure.”

Crowley shakes his head and then hisses, instantly regretting the way the simple motion pulls at his back muscles. “No. S’fine. Just--.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, with a firm tone he only uses when he’s _very_ disappointed. Crowley winces away from it. “Why are you being so stubborn about this?”

A long pause in which the only sound is their breathing, Crowley’s especially ragged with pain.

“I--don’t need your help. I haven’t. This whole time.”

Aziraphale, unseen, flinches back as if punched in the stomach. “I see.”

Aziraphale comes back around, crouching into Crowley’s line of sight. “That’s exactly why I must help you now. Do you understand? I let you down, my dear. You and the boy both. Everything you suffer now you suffer because I wasn’t there to help you manage the burden.”

“Adam’s not a burden,” Crowley growls. “That’s your problem. You never learned that. He was never anything but a problem, to you.”

Aziraphale’s lips purse but, in the end, he nods. “You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Crowley blinks at him. He hadn’t expected it to be that easy. “It’s...you were only--you’re only an angel, Angel. I get it.”

Aziraphale’s smile is bitter. “I’m not.”

“Not what?” Crowley asks, feeling off center, again. The longer his wings are exposed to the sting of open air, the more distracted he feels.

“An angel.”

Crowley’s head jerks up at that, eyes wide. Pain stabs viciously down his back and down his wings at the motion, but he ignores it. “You--whu-- _what_?”

“Not officially, anyway. My title is archangel, and I’ve retained most of the, ah, perks, but I no longer work as an agent of Heaven. I’ve been banished, I suppose.”

Crowley swallows. “Just for--for what?”

“I told you, dear. They asked me questions, and I had no answers for them. Afterward, they couldn’t sort out what to do with me. So, they sent me back down here. No more missions, no more direct support from on high. Just me and the world, now.”

Crowley works his mouth, thinking about hidden meanings. “They tortured you.”

Aziraphale sits back on his heels a bit. “They called it something different. But, yes.”

“ _Angel_ ,” Crowley breathes. “You--for us?”

Aziraphale smiles wanly. “I really didn’t know the answers they wanted. I had no idea where you’d gone off to.”

“You wouldn’t have told them, anyway,” Crowley says, with conviction.

Aziraphale’s eyes drop. “I’m not sure about that. It was...rather difficult, toward the end.”

Crowley reaches out awkwardly, bracing his weight on an elbow, and pats Aziraphale’s hand. “Thanks.”

Aziraphale’s smile warms noticeably. “Will you let me fix your wings? Please?”

“C-can--that is, with--?”

“My powers are limited, these days,” Aziraphale admits. “Archangels have significantly less inherent ability than a principality. And, moreover, I imagine someone somewhere is monitoring my expenditures. Keeping receipts, in a manner of speaking. But a bit here and there likely won’t do any harm.”

Crowley considers this. “Okay,” he agrees. “But nothing big. No drawing attention.”

Aziraphale nods. “Of course. I know I’ve no right to ask it, but I do hope you’ll trust me. I’ve learned my lesson.”

“I know.” A pause. “Whatever you’re going to do, just do it quick, please? This hurts like hell.”

Aziraphale stands and circles back around to get a better look at Crowley’s damaged wings. “Here we go, then,” he says in warning, placing his hands across the broad expanse of the right-side wing. He focuses his attention especially on the infected flesh and pushes a small portion of his power into it.

Crowley gasps loudly, reflexively trying to pull back and away. Aziraphale reaches out, holding Crowley steady, which only makes the demon shout in alarm and a stab of pain. 

“I’m sorry! It’s fine! That’s done. Relax.”

Crowley does, slowly, relax back down into his previous position. “That--was bad,” he pants out.

“I didn’t mean--it’s holy influence. I suppose it’s going to have to hurt, at first. How does it feel now?”

“Better?” Crowley hazards, uncertainly.

Aziraphale peers at the ruined wing. “It looks better, at least. No more infection that I can see.”

“ _Infection_?” Crowley asks, surprised.

Aziraphale hums. “Yes, dear. I told you. They’re quite a mess.”

Crowley sighs, resigned to it. “What about the other wing?”

“In a moment. Get your breath, first. And try not to flail about too much this time, hm?”

Crowley makes an affronted noise. Aziraphale grins behind him. 

\--

Adam is fourteen and strange in that way of all normal teenage boys. He’s _interested_ , for one thing. Interested in moon-eying around at whatever age-appropriate warm body is in his parth, for one. Interested in ignoring Crowley and his rules, for another. Keeping Adam safe inside of Purgatory becomes more and more difficult. In the end, Crowley can only compromise--he, Adam, and Aziraphale start to venture out into the wider world of Cardiff more often than not, trying to keep Adam’s wanderlust (and plain old lust) contained. 

Aziraphale makes a drawn sort of face as he eases himself into a sticky, pleather-and-aluminum seat. The table is small and round, the formica top stained from years of incidents with spilled pizza sauce. 

Crowley waves the waitress down and orders a small cheese pizza for the table. Adam is too busy to eat at the moment, playing some sort of racing game, but eventually he’ll come sauntering up with demands to be fed. 

“You’ll like it,” Crowley assures the uncomfortable looking angel. “It’s very cheesy.”

Aziraphale looks around the arcade with its neon-lined walls and loud, colorful games and terrible patterned carpet and lifts a brow in obvious agreement with that statement.

Crowley grins. He drops his head a bit, stretching his neck and the tight muscles of his back. Over the past few years, regular sessions with Aziraphale have healed much of the damage to the flesh of his wings. Even so, the feathers are beyond help until he can next take the time and energy to molt. The weight of the limbs are all wrong, and his aching back continues to over compensate as a result.

“All right?” Aziraphale asks with worried eyes.

Crowley waves him off. His eyes trail over again to Adam. He smirks at what he sees. One of the local girls and her three friends have come up to the boy. All of them are now engaged in enthusiastic conversation, Adam the most eager of all. Adam’s charisma is off the charts. They never go anywhere that boy doesn’t attract positive attention.

“The attractiveness of evil,” Aziraphale remarks, archly. 

Crowley throws a balled-up paper napkin at him. “Don’t be rude. He’s mortal. That’s what they do. Get all...you know. Friendly.”

Aziraphale sniffs, as if he does know and doesn’t care to think about it.

“Not so long ago, he was drooling all over me and babbling nonsense.”

Aziraphale huffs a soft laugh. “Yes, just last weekend, I think.”

Crowley grins. Last Saturday, they’d all three of them stayed up late watching one of Aziraphale’s precious black-and-white films with the subtitles. Crowley is convinced that Aziraphale doesn’t actually like the things, but the angel certainly enjoyed Adams irritation and, later, utter boredom in response.

“You know what I mean. He’s growing up. Fast.”

“They’re mortals, dear, that’s rather how it works.”

Crowley makes a soft noise so abruptly full to brimming with upset that Aziraphale startles in his seat.

“Wha--?”

“Mortal,” Crowley says, faintly. 

Understanding hits Aziraphale in the heart. He sighs, patting Crowley’s arm lightly. “Most likely so,” he hedges, as if it will help.

Crowley swallows thickly, thinking of the future, of aging, of what happens to the mortal life and immortal soul of the son of Satan, even when he’s Adam.

“We should go home,” Crowley says, already bolting out of his seat and going toward the boy to fetch him.

Aziraphale’s hand loops tight around the demon’s forearm. “My dear,” he says, reasonably. “Let him play.”

“But--.”

“He’s been so cooped up. He’s enjoying himself. Let him, please.”

Crowley slowly sits down again. A fine tremor runs through his hand as he drags it down his face.

When the pizza finally arrives, Aziraphale eats a slice just to appease the demon across from him. Crowley neglects the meal entirely, keeping a closer eye than ever on his son. Adam, predictably, comes to the table an hour or so later, begging for lunch. 

“What’s wrong?” Adam asks in between big, wolfish bites of crust and toppings. He’s had another growth spurt this year, and he’s always ravenous. 

“Nothing,” Crowley says. “Slow down, you’re going to choke.”

Adam grins at him, mouth messy with sauce. Crowley rolls his eyes and pushes a handful of napkins at him. 

“Becca, the girl back there in the green, she and her friends are going to the movies, after this. Can I go, too?”

Crowley opens his mouth to shut the question down immediately, to remind Adam of the danger they’re in, to remind him that he isn’t safe alone.

Then he thinks, with a stab, of mortality and the fleeting nature of man’s time on earth. 

“Yeah,” he says.

Adam stops chewing. He swallows thickly and stares. “What, really?”

Crowley raises his eyebrows over his shades. “You asked, didn’t you? Why ask, if you’re going to be so surprised when I answer?”

Adam rubs his face with the napkin. “It’s just...you never say ‘yes’ to anything. Not to anything fun.”

Crowley winces at that accusation. He’s the worst demon on the planet and quite possibly the worst parent, too. “Well, then, best to enjoy the opportunity while it lasts. Come straight home afterward, though, all right?”

Adam nods vigorously, grinning wide. “Yeah! Definitely. Of course. Thanks, Dad.”

Crowley sighs as the boy picks up another piece of pizza and a handful of napkins and races back to the milling crowd of fellow teens near the racing games. “Was that a mistake?”

Aziraphale hums. “Only God is to know, my dear. But, no. I don’t think it was.”

\--

Adam is sixteen and is looking into universities, maybe, and has a girlfriend (her name is Fiona, and she’s all right) and spends almost all of his time out in Cardiff with his friends.

Crowley spends most of the first few months of this behavior sitting in Purgatory, fretting. Then he starts sitting in Aziraphale’s new flat, fretting. And then he just gives up on fretting altogether because it’s exhausting and damaging his cool.

So, when Adam comes to him one evening and says, out of the blue, “Fiona and some of our mates want to go to London for the weekend” all Crowley can say is “Okay, sure” as if the mere idea of Adam an entire city away without protection, without backup, doesn’t fill him up with utter terror.

Before Adam goes, Crowley yanks him into a tight embrace. 

Adam fidgets and then pulls back entirely with a sharp “Hey, stop that!”. 

Crowley looks at--eye to eye, these days--his son with a sheepish expression. “Just want to make sure you’re protected.”

“Yeah, well. Don’t drain yourself dry in the effort. I’m fine! My ward is perfect.”

“I know. I do. I only--.”

“I wish you’d trust me. Just once.”

This leaves Crowley silent, shocked. He blinks a few times. “I-I do? I do! Adam, I swear--.”

Adam waves him away, grumpily. “It’s fine. I get it. Have a good weekend.”

“Yeah,” Crowley manages, weakly, as Adam departs. “You, too.”

\--

“I do trussst him,” Crowley says for something like the tenth time. He’s very, very drunk.

Aziraphale eyes him across the table.

“I do!” Crowley insists. “I always have. Trusssted him to be normal. To not be too good or too bad. To just be--be--.” He hiccups. “Be safe.”

“Do you truly trust him to be safe without you?” Aziraphale asks, point blank.

Crowley makes a small, miserable noise. “I don’t want him to _have_ to be.”

\--

Adam comes back from his weekend away all in one piece. He and Crowley have an awkward few days in the aftermath, speaking rarely and mostly avoiding each other’s orbits. 

Adam breaks the stalemate. 

Crowley cuts mushrooms in the kitchen, planning to help Nina (a transient, she’s only been around a few days and is leaving in a few more) make a salad to go with everyone’s dinners. He’s gotten used to these small, mundane tasks that support the greater good of staying alive. No one will ever accuse him of being a master of any of it, but he does all right. 

Adam walks into the kitchen, grabs a cherry tomato from a bowl, and pops it in his mouth. Crowley keeps on slicing fungus.

“When I was four, I fell out of that big ash tree in the back garden. Do you remember?”

Crowley’s hands pause a moment. “Yeah.” He could hardly forget. Adam had been out of his sight for barely a minute. He’d _just_ turned around, just called the boy’s name, when he heard the crash as Adam’s small, fragile body fell out of the tree. He hadn’t managed to climb very high (he’d made himself a makeshift ladder out of an upturned soil bucket), but the fall had been--.

“I’d broken something.”

“Your leg,” Crowley manages, shaken by this conversation. He clears his throat. “The bone was showing.”

Adam nods. “Yeah. Not for long, though.”

Crowley glances at him sidelong and then goes back to his work. 

Adam presses the issue. “I was scared and hurting. And you swooped in immediately. Put your hands over the break. Made it disappear, along with all the scratches and bumps and bruises I’d gotten on the way down. It was like nothing never happened.”

Crowley scoops up two handfuls of mushrooms and tosses them into the large bowl full of greens.

“That’s what you’ve always done. My whole life, anything painful or difficult disappeared before it had hardly happened.”

Crowley leans against the kitchen counter, glad he’s turned away and Adam can’t see his face. He closes his eyes, expecting the hammer to fall, now, to release its judgement. 

“I’ve never thanked you for that,” Adam says. His hand lands on Crowley’s shoulder, gives it a gentle squeeze. “You’ve put everything you had of yourself--quite literally--into protecting me. And I know I’ve never been properly grateful. I’m sorry.”

Crowley’s shoulders slump with relief. He doesn’t dare turn around. “You deserve a bigger, better life,” he mutters down at the bowl of lettuce. “I’m sorry you didn’t get it earlier.”

Adam tugs at him. Crowley sighs, turning around to face his child. His tall, bright-eyed boy who is very nearly a grown up, now. Adam’s eyes are serious, his brows drawn in close. 

“You kept me safe. You let me grow. I know how hard this is for you, loosening the reins. I know you’re scared for me.”

Crowley pulls the boy into a hug. “I’d always be scared for you, Adam. Whether you go off to the far reaches of the world or always stay right by my side. You might as well go exploring, then, right? I do trust you. I know you have the strength and cleverness to get along fine without me.”

“I do,” Adam agrees. “But I don’t want to have to, either.”

\--

“So, is the world just never going to end, then, you think?” Aziraphale asks. It’s late. They’re drunk. The question is a valid one that has, until now, never been spoken between them.

“Every while or so, Adam gets what he calls ‘a feeling.’ Then he jussst, you know. Decides not to act on it.”

“And that’s all it takes, is it?”

Crowley lifts a shoulder. It makes his back twinge. He grimaces. “So far?”

“Heaven not making a fuss makes some sense, I suppose. They’ve abandoned me.” Aziraphale must be much more drunk than he’d like to admit, talking like that. “But it’s strange, it’s--strange? It’s strange that Hell hasn’t--you know. You know?”

Crowley nods. He does know. “We’re pretty hidden?” he guesses.

“Not _so_ hidden,” Aziraphale argues. “Adam’s ward is very good. But you’re still walking about.”

“Only when I’m not--other places.” All this time, and Crowley has never told the angel where he and Adam go, when they are gone. Aziraphale has never asked. It’s only fair. 

“Do you think it’s that easy, really?”

Crowley’s laugh is a hollow one. “Angel,” he drawls. “You know me. I’m always waiting for the other shoe to drop.”

Aziraphale hums. He does know. “So, then? What will you do, dear, when it does?”

Crowley shrugs again. His back tightens and he groans, resting his head on the table in defeat. “Die, I s’pect.”

Aziraphale pats his head gently and (drunkenly) with too much force. “Oh.”

\--

Adam goes to uni, and he takes Dog with him.

Not that Crowley is especially enamored of the mutt. But the lack of presence of both his son and the wee beastie that has been his shadow for the past six years is an especially painful blow.

Crowley hangs about in Purgatory just long enough to gather his things and tie up some loose ends. He shakes Eurie’s hand and thanks her profusely. He gives Yix a hug and reminisces with zir about their Adam and how proud they both are of the kid, getting all his certificates and going away to school. Adam hasn’t decided what program he wants to read for, yet, but Crowley and Yix are certain that whatever it might be, he’ll excel in it. 

Once that’s done, all that’s left to do is knock on Aziraphale’s door.

“Oh! You’re early,” the angel says, fussily.

“Does that matter?” Crowley asks genuinely as he steps inside. He laughs. “Oh, I see.”

The small flat is completely, devastatingly empty. There’s no books, no furniture, nothing at all of what’s been there for years.

“What are you doing?” Crowley asks, curiously.

Aziraphale rubs his hands together in a nervous gesture. “I thought--that is, I suspected it might be easier to, er, start from scratch, as it were.”

Crowley blinks at him, confused.

Aziraphale puts his hand on the demon’s elbow. “Well, it’s only right, isn’t it, that a shared home ought to reflect everyone who lives in it?”

Crowley’s throat goes tight. He lifts up the single potted plant held under his elbow. “I got all I meant to bring, Angel. I don’t care--I mean, you should do what you like.”

“I’d like you to feel at home here.”

Crowley makes a complicated face. “Aziraphale. I--that is. It’s always home, with you.”

The angel’s eyes go suspiciously damp. He coughs softly and turns away, gesturing at the far wall. “Yes. Well. I thought perhaps we’d get a nice television, there, for when Adam visits. What do you think?”

Crowley smiles. “Yeah. Great.” 

And it is, actually.

\--

The world ends with a phone call. 

Adam’s voice on the other end of the line, confused and shattered, stammering out “I-I can’t stop it” before the line goes abruptly, terrifyingly dead.

Mere minutes later, familiar faces at the door of their flat. Beelzebub and Michael, standing together as if there is nothing more natural in the world. They bully their way into the flat. They sit on Aziraphale and Crowley’s couch. They touch their things with appraising, disapproving eyes. 

Crowley and Aziraphale stand side by side, hands clasped, each trying to subtly shift in front of the other and failing miserably. 

“There’s no sense in fighting it,” Michael says, firmly.

“It’zz how it hazz to be,” Beelezebub agrees.

They missed their turn in the war between Heaven and Hell. Now, Heaven and Hell is bringing war to the world, to all of humanity, with Adam as the general they seek to fell in the first volly. 

“We need to know where he is,” Michael says.

“We are asking nicely,” Beelezebub adds, “For now.”

Aziraphale and Crowley exchange glances.

\--

The thing is, there’s a woman in a small village named Agnes. And once, a long time ago, a demon gave her a demonic miracle with instructions to use it wisely.

And, up until now, she never felt the need to use it.

Not until she swings by Cambridge and practically plucks Adam Crowley up off the streets. 

“Hello,” she says in her warm, Welsh accent. “My name is Agnes. Do you remember me? I can see the future. And your future, boy, seems a bit bleak. Now, tell me, where is your dad these days?”

Adam, winded and frantic, having just narrowly escaped an attempt on his life by a demon called Ligur and an angel called Uriel, tells her.

And Agnes Nutter, descendent of Agnes Nutter, lets her borrowed power pulse into the car around them and blink them away to a bit of road just outside a tiny flat in Cardiff.

\--

The thing is, even an antichrist only has so much power to be going on with, intrinsically. The hierarchy is pretty clear. God is at the tippy top. Satan has slightly less--more than an angel, less than God. Below God and Satan are their followers. Angels and demons have their own hierarchies, but for this discussion, they don’t matter. Suffice to say that the line of succession of power goes God > Satan > Satan’s son > angel and demon kind. 

Adam has plenty of power to take on the amassed armies of Heaven and Hell, theoretically, as long as his bio dad and grandad stay out of it. The problem is, he doesn’t _want_ to. 

Adam’s entrance causes quite a stir. Crowley and Aziraphale say his name in tandem, Crowley moving toward him, Aziraphale holding Crowley back. Michael and Beelezebub stand. Michael throws a projectile of some sort at Adam. Adam deflects it with a thought. He circles the attacking duo and goes to his parents in a few long strides, putting himself between both sets of angel and demon.

“Go away,” Adam says, primly. “You’re not wanted here.” And he vanishes them both from existence.

“Where--?” Crowley asks, after a beat.

Adam shrugs. “No clue. Are you two all right?”

Crowley makes a small choking sound and pulls Adam into his arms, squeezing tight. 

“I’ll take that as a yes, I suppose?” Adam asks Aziraphale over Crowley’s shoulder. Aziraphale shrugs.

“What are we going to do?” Crowley asks, when he finally pulls away from the embrace.

Adam and Aziraphale exchange a dark look. Crowley frowns at them. 

“What?”

“Well, my dear, I rather think we’re about to go to war,” Aziraphale says, apologetically.

Adam nods. “Seems likely.”

Crowley opens his mouth, about to argue against this idea _vehemently_ , when Agnes Nutter pops her head in with a low ‘cooee.’

“Hello. Sorry. Just checking that everything’s all right…?”

Crowley’s eyes widen in immediate recognition. “Agnes?”

She beams at him. “Hello again. Adam, what’s the plan?”

Adam makes a thoughtful face. “Well, I don’t know, Madame Oracle. You tell me.”

\--

Agnes’s visions are typically limited in scope (only current-day knowledge or a few weeks in advance at most), very detailed, but also rather sparse. So, she can only tell them a few things:

The armies of Heaven and Hell intend to destroy humanity.

The Four Horsemen are in route to help out.

The final battle will happen in Cardiff.

Adam’s death is the lynchpin that turns the attack to the favor of Heaven and Hell.

From this, Aziraphale determines that they should flee and get out of Cardiff. All Crowley can glean from it is that his son is going to die if he doesn’t act immediately to prevent it. 

Adam just sits down on the couch. He’s thinking about Aziraphale reading him bedtime stories and Crowley protecting him with pieces of his own soul. He’s thinking about all the people in Purgatory, hiding from horrors that always went unspoken, no matter how badly a young boy might want to know about them. He’s thinking about a girl in green who’d invited him out to his first movie with friends as if it were the easiest thing in the world. He’s thinking about hide-and-go-seek.

“‘Where did you go, Adam?’” he mutters to himself, deep in remembrance. He thinks about being human and being unholy and being blessed, every day, by the protection of someone who loved him immensely simply because he was himself.

“I went to a desert. And there was a wall. And there was a gate in the wall. And beyond the gate there was...a garden? Plants, everywhere.”

And the world _shifts_.

\--

Aziraphale opens his eyes to find himself surrounded by green. There is a sword in his hand. When he looks at it, it catches fire.

“Oh dear.”

\--

Crawly curls up tight around a tree branch and stares down, fixated, at the ground far below. It’s been a long time since he dared climb so high, and he’s a bit spooked by the prospect of falling.

Falling. No. That was done, already. It had hurt like the dickens, but otherwise it hadn’t been so terribly bad.

At least he gets sent to interesting places.

\--

There’s a boy in the garden. Or, rather, a young man. He’s got golden curly hair and a handsome face and he seems more than a little lost.

Crawly drops down in front of him as he passes. “Hey, kid. You want an apple?”

Adam blinks at him, slowly, and laughs in his face. “Is that the line you used on Eve?” he asks, innocently.

With the question, all of Crowley’s memories come back in a wave. He slips out of the tree and transforms into his humanoid corporation. He stares at his hands and then looks up at the apples hanging, perfect in every way, from the branches of the Tree. “Ah. Here again.”

Adam plucks three apples from the nearest branch with a hum of agreement. “Here,” he says, pushing one of the fruit into Crowley’s hands.

“What am I supposed to do with it?”

“Now? Nothing. Just wait. Come with me.”

“With you? Where?”

“To the gate, of course. The eastern one.”

Crowley gasps in soft, fond nostalgia to see Aziraphale there, sitting on a rock just inside the eastern gate, staring out into the empty desert beyond.

At the noise, the angel turns. He lifts his sword, though the motion seems rather perfunctory. “Who goes there? Who are you?”

Adam waves one of his apple-filled hands at the angel. “Hello, Az. We’ve brought you a snack.”

Crowley watches with interest as recognition and understanding flood over Aziraphale’s face. 

“Oh,” the angel says, thoughtfully, eyeing the perfect fruit with no small amount of suspicion. “Why?”

Adam grins. “Because sometimes the beginning is the best place to start over from,” he says, with a shrug. “Trust me.”

Crowley takes a large bite of his apple with no further prompting.

Aziraphale hesitates.

Adam approaches the angel. He puts a hand on Aziraphale’s shoulder and squeezes lightly. “You should know,” Adam says, very seriously, “I don’t blame you for what happened all those years ago. You were doing what you thought was best for the world and for Crowley. I could never begrudge you that.” 

“My dear boy, I don’t think I _can_ \--.”

“We need your help,” Adam says, firmly. “We can’t do this without you.”

Aziraphale, who had so utterly failed to help when it mattered most, nods. “All right,” he says, agreeably, and he takes a bite of his own apple.

Adam’s teeth sink into his with a satisfying, juicy crunch. 

And then the world around them _shifts_.

\--

It’s about...understanding? Comprehension. No. Knowing. Knowing, with a capital-K. They eat of the fruit of the forbidden tree and they Know. They Know that evil and good are about actions, decisions, choices, repercussions. They Know that they are not alone, that they are powerful together, that their cause is worth the struggle. They also Know, without a doubt, that they are going to win this war before it even begins.

The minute they reappear in the small flat in Cardiff, staggering a bit under the weight of space displacement, Crowley turns to Adam and puts his hands on both of the kid’s shoulders.

“I hate that you have to do this,” Adam says, earnestly. “I think, if we could just stop and talk about it for a minute--.”

“--We don’t have a minute,” Crowley reminds him. They both Know this. “Hey. I love you.” And they both Know that, too.

Crowley closes his eyes, not because he has to but just because it feels right. He concentrates on the power within him and pushes it into Adam’s wards. It taps out quick and he shifts over to his brutalized wings, pouring that in, too.

“Stop,” Adam says, pushing against the demon’s chest. “Hey! Dad! Stop.”

Crowley stops, gasping, shaking like a leaf. All of his remaining feathers--all but two or three--fall away from the flesh of his wings and disappear from existence. The power that once flowed through every pinion and vane fills Adam up to brimming. He practically glows.

It’d be too much, typically, even for the antichrist to handle. It’s the power of demonspawn and a demon in one mortal body, as much power as Satan himself. But Crowley has been supplementing Adam’s protections with his power for years and years. His mortal body recognizes the energy. It accepts it as easily as Adam’s own. It feels right, even if Adam’s skin is tight and everything within his field of vision now possesses a strange, colorful aura around it. 

Aziraphale steps forward and supports Crowley’s weight on his shoulder. With his free hand, he lifts the flaming sword he had carried over from their little dream of Eden. “You’ll need this,” the angel says, softly.

Adam swallows but nods, taking the blade. Its fire-y light goes soft and bright, more like a lightbulb than a flame. 

Agnes blinks at all of them, looking thoughtfully into the middle distance. “I think you’ve changed the future. Do you want me to--?”

Adam smiles at her as he runs by. “Doesn’t matter!” he assures her.

Aziraphale and Crowley follow him out. 

“We’re going to win, you see,” Aziraphale explains.

“It’s basically foolproof,” Crowley adds. “So we should be fine.”

\--

Here’s the thing about humanity: They’re very good at making things up.

Here’s the thing about Knowing: It makes making made up things real much easier to do.

Cardiff is full of screaming and terror and human fear. It’s awful. So, Adam the antichrist, adopted son of a demon and an angel, stands in front of the amassed armies of Heaven and Hell. He raises the glowing sword (bright with angelic power) and lifts his chin (whole body thrumming with demonic essence) and speaks words into reality, putting all his power behind it: “It’s time for you all to go back home, I think,” he says, “And don’t come back, either. We don’t want you.”

And the soldiers--demonic and angel, standing shoulder to shoulder--look at each other in confusion and immediately disappear from mortal and immortal sight, back from whence they came.

“...Cool,” Crowley remarks, mildly. He’s very tired. He leans more heavily on Aziraphale, and the angel takes the added weight in stride.

“Is that it, then?” Aziraphale asks, hopefully. 

And then the ground beneath their feet begins to quake.

“Aw, damn,” Crowley groans. “It’s you know who, I suspect.”

And, indeed, it was.

“Do you think ‘you’re not my real dad’ is appropriate, here, or not?” Adam asks the two entities behind him. 

Crowley snorts an appreciative laugh. Aziraphale smiles.

A great hole appears in the ground, all of the earth disappearing into it as if filling a massive crater underneath. 

“I’d really like _not_ to see my boss up here, right now,” Crowley says, rather strained. 

“I agree,” Aziraphale adds, fretfully.

Adam bites on his lip, unsure. He lifts the sword. He squares his shoulders. He turns, abruptly, on his heel, putting his back to the ominous pit in the ground. Crowley’s eyes find his, despite the very distracting spectacle happening over Adam’s shoulder.

“Adam?” Aziraphale asks, warily. The boy is holding that sword rather close to he and Crowley both. 

“You’re my family,” Adam tells them, in a rush. “You took me in and took care of me. You fed and clothed me. You told me stories and played games with me. You taught me things you could and helped others teach me what you couldn’t. You’ve protected me. Pushed me. Loved me. You’re my family. The only family I want. The only family I need.”

The rumbling under their feet suddenly stops. 

“You’re my dads,” Adam says, firmly. “And no one else can have the privilege.”

And the world _shifts_.

\--

It’s all normal, again, around them. No great, massive dent in the earth. No screaming civilians. No ominous clouds or blustering winds or whatever else. It’s not _still_ , exactly, but it is calmer, to boot. 

Adam has two pair of arms around him, holding him tight. He lifts his hands--the sword is gone, again; it seems to do that--and wraps them around the demon and angel in turn. “I think it’s really over, now.”

“Thank G--well. Thanks to someone, anyway,” Aziraphale says, with a faint cough. 

Crowley mumbles something unintelligible. His back aches something fierce. He needs a nap.

“No more world saving,” he declares, a bit more clearly. “Only sleep.”

Aziraphale kisses his temple lightly. “Of course, dear. Adam, will you be coming home with us, for a bit? The spare room is always ready for you.” 

Adam grins at his two dopey parents. “Yeah, all right. I hope you have beer.”

Aziraphale sniffs a bit. “There’s some left from your last visit, I’m sure.”

\--

Adam sits on the overstuffed reading chair in the living room, nursing this third beer and peeling the label away from the bottle in turn. 

Aziraphale perches on the far end of the couch. Crowley’s head rests on his thighs, the rest of him stretched out long across the furniture, his socked feet hanging over the opposite armrest. The demon is deeply asleep. Aziraphale strokes his fingers through Crowley’s hair idly as he and Adam speak in low tones.

“I remember the day Crowley said you’d arrived,” Aziraphale says, speaking carefully, “I remember thinking he’d never really manage it. I thought he might swap the babies, of course. But I never expected he’d take you in.” 

The angel pauses, looking down rather shamefacedly. “I wouldn’t have done it, in his shoes.”

Adam makes a soft sound of acknowledgement. “It’s all right. It’d be a lot to ask. It was. It was a lot to ask.”

“He knew it was worth it,” Aziraphale tells him. “It took me longer, I’m afraid. But I can see, now, he was right.”

Adam smiles at him and tips his beer forward in recognition. “Thanks.”

Aziraphale sighs down at Crowley’s sleeping form. “His wings,” the angel says, unhappily.

“I’m pretty sure I can help you with that,” Adam says, slowly. “If--I mean, if you wouldn’t mind. I know it’s...private?”

Aziraphale blushes. “Not especially. I’m sure he wouldn’t be bothered. And I’m not, either, as long as he feels better. His back troubles him terribly. It’s awful to see.”

Adam nods. “We can look at it as soon as he’s awake.” A pause. “And as soon as m’little more sober.”

Aziraphale beams at him. “You have always been such a sweet boy.”

And to that, Adam can only laugh.

\--

“Just yesterday, you were nothing but a baby,” Crowley says, rather accusatory.

Adam rolls his eyes. “It’s been twenty-four years,” he corrects. “And you’re tying that all wrong.”

Crowley shoots him a look. “I’ve been tying bow ties since they were invented, you whippersnapper.”

“Tying them wrong, apparently. Budge.” Adam knocks Crowley’s hands out of the way and easily fixes the demon’s wonky tie.

“How are you feeling about this?” Crowley asks.

Adam blinks at him, tugging his own tie in apparent unconscious reaction. “Fine. Why?”

“Most people would be nervous.”

“What’s there to be nervous about? You go up there, you say some lines, there’s kissing, and it ends. Do you remember that I stopped a full out apocalypse, once?”

Crowley’s eyes narrow, incredulous. “You may have charisma, kid, but you’ve never been good with--well.”

Adam frowns. “That’s not true.”

Crowley shrugs, turning away from his son and peering at himself in the mirror. To any peering eyes, they look nearly the same age, these days. It’s a bit strange, Crowley has to admit. Maybe he’ll start miracling a few touches to his corporation. A bit of distinguished grey at the temples, at least.

Yix pops zir head into the small room. “Hi. It’s time, you two.”

Crowley and Adam both swallow in tandem.

\--

“You’re white as a sheet,” Aziraphael says, worriedly.

Crowley’s shoulders go stiff. He glances at Adam. “I’m fine.”

“Oh, my dear. It’s--.”

“All God’s children, welcome. We are gathered here today--.”

Aziraphale takes Crowley’s hand and gives it a squeeze.

“--to bear witness to the union of two souls before the eyes of God and all here in His holy church.”

Crowley misses the next bit, his heart too busy rattling in his chest. Besides, he doesn’t suppose any of it matters, much, as long as he--. 

“ _Crowley.”_

Behind Aziraphale’s shoulder, Adam’s eyebrows raise in question.

“Erk?” Crowley manages.

Aziraphale sighs and turns a bit toward the preacher (nice man, not overly preachy, thank goodness). “Could you repeat that bit, please?” he asks, politely. Their assembled audience twitters softly in response.

The man nods. “A. J. Crowley, do you take this man to--?”

“Oh, right! Yes. Absolutely. I do.”

Adam breathes a very loud sigh of relief. Aziraphale smiles at Crowley, amused. Crowley ducks his head, embarrassed.

He’s never been especially keen on weddings.

\--

“So, when’s your turn?” Yix asks Adam in a loud, slightly overly boisterous voice. Zie has been hitting the sauce steadily. At least Yix appears to be a highly friendly--if somewhat puckish--drunk. 

Adam shrugs. “Eh, I don’t know.” He gestures toward the slowly swaying couple alone on the dance floor. “Things is, when you grow up with _that_ , nothing ever seems likely to compare.”

Yix nods, patting Adam’s arm sympathetically. “Still, they did all right, didn’t they? Thought Crowley was going to pull a runaway groom, for a bit, myself.”

Adam smirks. “Yeah. He, uh. Isn’t so good in front of crowds, if you can believe it.”

Yix grins. Zie has known Crowley a long time, long enough to understand him better than most. “Mr. Cool,” zie says, sarcastically.

Adam nods. “Yeah.” He pauses and then admits, slowly, “He did want to bail, earlier today. Not because he didn’t--well. He was worried about me, I guess.”

“You? Why?”

Adam lifts a shoulder. “Thinks I disapprove.”

Yix levels him with a look. “Do you?”

Adam shakes his head. “Aziraphale did something to us a long time ago. Crowley remembers it as some great betrayal. He’s forgiven Az, obviously, but he’s still wounded by it, deep down. But, for me, it wasn’t like that. There was a time, after I’d learned a few things about myself, that I felt like Aziraphale had actually been in the right; it was Crowley, to me, who’d done the wrong thing.”

“And now?”

Adam smiles, Knowingly. “It’s never that easy. The right thing, the wrong thing. It doesn’t work like that. They both did wrong. They both did right. All that matters is that they did what they felt was best at the time. And, you know, it turned out fine, all said and done.”

Yix follows his eyes to the dancing couple. “You’re a lucky kid,” Zie hazards. “Two good dads, doing their best.”

Adam nods. “That I am.” He grins over at his old teacher. “You wanna dance?”

Yix rolls zir eyes. “Yeah, but not with you. You’re a _child_. Go find some other _child_ to shimmy with. I’m too old for that sh-stuff.”

Adam grins. Obligingly, he meets the gaze of a young, dark-skinned man standing over by the dessert table. Adam waves and makes a ‘you and me?’ gesture between them. The man’s equally dark eyes light up and he nods.

“Always such a charmer,” Yix teases as the former antichrist walks away. 

Adam just waves at zir in acknowledgement as he passes by.

As he crosses the floor, Crowley’s eyes follow Adam’s path. “Oh, there he goes again.”

Aziraphale turns their bodies around so he, too, can see. The angel smiles. “Let him have his fun.”

“He needs to settle down,” Crowley complains, not for the first time.

“Why?”

Crowley pulls back a bit, meeting the angel’s eyes with his own soft gaze. Even behind his sunglasses, Aziraphale can see the love. “It’s pleasant, for a start.”

Aziraphale pats the shoulder under his hand idly. “We’ve been perfectly fine role models, I’m sure. Stop worrying.”

“Angel, I swear. Six thousand years and it’s like you don’t know me at all, sometimes.”

Aziraphale snorts indelicately. “Oh, I know you. I _Know_ you, in fact.”

Crowley hums agreeably, resting his forehead against Aziraphale’s own. “That’s true,” he admits, content with that.

“So, let the boy have some fun.”

“Yeah, yeah, all right. He just better not be planning on having fun in our apartment. I don’t want to come back from our honeymoon to a bunch of broken hearted weeping.”

Aziraphale huffs a laugh. “From the boy or Adam?”

“God, who can even guess?”

Aziraphale peers around Crowley’s shoulder. Adam and the unknown young man are closer, now, talking to each other with animated gestures.

“Maybe we should offer Adam a room at the hotel. There’s a few vacant from the guests that didn’t show.”

Crowley groans but agrees that that is, likely, a very good idea.

“He used to be a sweet, innocent baby. All he did was drool and caused no troubles at all,” Crowley whines.

Aziraphale hums, placating. “I know, dear. I know.”

\--

Adam prods Crowley in the side. “Hey. Someone’s been corrupting my daughter, again. Was it you or the other bastard?”

Crowley lifts the magazine from off his face and peers at Adam against the glare of the sun. The whole family chose the beach for their weekend away, and while Crowley doesn’t mind basking in the warm rays of the sun for a bit, the rest of it leaves much to be desired. “Come again?”

“Evie just came up and told me the _filthiest_ joke I’ve ever heard. She’s only seven. You can’t tell her things like that.”

Crowley hurumphs and throws the magazine back over his face. “It’s school,” Crowley says, muffled. “They always get like that when you send them off to school. I have nothing to do with it.” A pause. “But you should have her come tell me the joke, later. I want to hear it, too.”

Later, Aziraphale will admit (to Crowley only) that he is at fault. “I didn’t realize it was dirty!” the angel protests. “I heard that jest back in the 1500s, I think! How was I to know the world play would carry a different meaning, now?”

“So clever,” Crowley sighs, kissing the angel on the cheek. “And yet.”

\--

Crowley jerks, startled, when Adam comes round the corner into the kitchen. “What are you doing here?” the demon blurts out.

Adam frowns at him. “Is your back hurting, again?”

Adam has just caught Crowley in the act of standing in the middle of the kitchen, violently twisting his spine from side to side, stretching the muscles in and over his scapulas.

“Again, still, what’s it matter? What are you doing here?”

Adam raises an eyebrow. “It’s Wednesday.”

Crowley stares back at him. “And?”

“It’s Wednesday. Charles has the kids. The school trip to the zoo, remember? And you said I could stop by and you and Aziraphale and I could make a day of it.”

Crowley shakes his head. “No can do. Aziraphale went off to parts unknown to pick up some books. He won’t be back until tomorrow, I gather.”

Adam’s expression is more disappointed than expected.

“Hey,” Crowley asks, “What’s up?”

Adam shrugs. “Nothing. It’s just that I feel like we’re never together just the three of us, much, anymore.”

“That’s what happens when you cohabit with somebody and adopt kids. Your social life dies,” Crowley points out.

Adam smirks at him. “Does it?”

Crowley waves a dismissive hand. “Your dad and I never had a social life to begin with. It was all work, work, work--except with each other.”

Adam’s smirk softens into a real smile. “God, you’re both so gross.”

Crowley throws a hand towel at him. “C’mon, then. It can just be you and me, like old times. You want to help me make dinner?”

Adam tilts his head at him. “I don’t know. Do I have to peel garlic the whole time?”

\--

“Why me?” Crowley asks the wide universe. It’s a good question. A useful question. He’s always liked it. 

Adam shows no remorse. “It’s just for a few days.”

Crowley glowers at the bassinet in his son’s hand. It has a wicker outside and a covering. It looks like a basket. Crowley is suspicious of it in the extreme.

“Dad, please. Charles wants to visit his mother. The girls want to stay at their friends’ for a while. And I want to work on my writing. The deadline’s looming, and my agent is going to kick my teeth in if I don’t get her something workable soon.”

“My dear,” Aziraphale scolds Crowley. He leans over the demon and takes the bassinet from Adam with a smile. “We’ll take good care of the tyke.”

Adam smiles back. “Thanks, Az. You’re the best dad.” Adam looks at Crowley meaningfully. Crowley scowls at him long after the door has shut between them and the sound of Adam’s car zooming down the road has faded to nothing.

“Don’t be so sour,” Aziraphale says. 

“I didn’t sign up for _generations_ of this, Angel,” Crowley declares. “This is Satan at work, punishing me for my hubris.”

“Don’t be so mean to poor Ezra. He hardly deserves it.”

“You’re only nice about him because he’s ostensibly named after you.”

Aziraphale scoffs. He places the bassinet on the floor and gamely retrieves the baby from it. “As if Evie wasn’t _your_ favorite.”

Crowley makes a comical face. “Poor Maria. She didn’t do anything wrong.”

“The perils of being the middle child, I’ve been told.”

Crowley hums. He makes a mental note to pull Maria aside, someday, and make sure she doesn’t feel neglected by their grandfatherly attentions. 

“Yes, well. When one of these ones has kids, they better name one Anthony.”

“Why not Julian?” Aziraphale asks, distractedly. He’s changing Ezra’s diaper like a pro (which, by now, he is). 

“Why Julian?” Crowey shoots back, confused.

Aziraphale pauses in his duties, looking at Crowley in surprise. “Isn’t that what the ‘J’ stands for?”

Crowley blinks. “Huh. Maybe? I don’t actually remember.”

Aziraphale snorts. “They do say that memory is the first to go, ‘granddad.’”

Crowley huffs at him. “Just for that, you’re on diaper duty all weekend.”

“My dear, I am _always_ on diaper duty. It’s hardly a punishment if it’s a task you always foist on me, anyway.”

Crowley just grumbles something dour, rubbing his hand idly at his opposite shoulder. “Everyone’s so mean to me,” he declares. “I’m going to take a bath.”

Aziraphale rolls his eyes and looks down at the ever-smiling baby Ezra. “Don’t mind him, dear. I rather think he’d expected to take a long nap, today, and I’m afraid you’ve spoiled that, a bit. It’s not personal.”

Ezra blows spit bubbles at him, peaceably. Aziraphale cannot help but be violently reminded of Adam at the sight. 

\--

Adam appears at Crowley’s side. Crowley hadn’t heard him coming, but he doesn’t startle, either. Adam’s aura always precedes him. 

“Where have you been, Adam?” Crowley offers in greeting.

Adam smiles, kicking his booted feet into the dirt. “I went to...oh, I don’t know. America, I guess?”

Crowley laughs softly. “Adults are so boring. You were much more inventive, as a kid.”

Adam hums. “Yeah. You should hear some of the things Ezra comes up with, when he’s of a mind to. It’s amazing. I’ve stolen some of it, actually, for my next book.”

“Plagiarizing from your own children? Truly, you are the antichrist.” Crowley circles his shoulders forward and back, grimacing. 

Adam rests a palm between his shoulder blades. Warm, tingling power spreads through the battered muscles, easing the pain. Crowley breathes out a slow sigh of relief, shoulders slumping for a moment, head falling forward. 

“Thanks.”

“I’m sorry,” Adam says, not for the first time. 

Crowley waves him off. After the averted apocalypse, Adam and Aziraphale had worked together for several days in a row to heal the demon’s damaged wings. The flesh is whole enough, now, but the feathers won’t grow back. His power is a faint trickle, now, and is unlikely to recover for millennia, if ever. The pain in his back lingers, chronic and unyielding. It doesn’t matter. It was worth it. 

Crowley looks up at the sky. It’s always easy to make them all out, here, just outside the perimeter of Tadfield. Adam and his husband had moved back into Jasmine Cottage not long after acquiring Ezra. It was good for them, that move. Living in the village has slowed them all down, a bit. 

Crowley actually finds himself envious, in a way. Crowley looks up at the stars in their multitudes and allows himself to Know.

“I’m proud of you,” Crowley says. “In case I haven’t said it, before.”

Adam bumps his father’s shoulder with his own. “I know you are. But thanks, too.” A pause. “Why now?”

Crowley shakes his head slightly. “Seems like something that should be said more often between fathers and sons.” He pauses, repeats himself. “Between Fathers and sons, I mean.”

Adam shifts from foot to foot. He grabs Crowley’s wrist and then his hand, holding onto those fingers like he hasn’t since he was a tiny child. Crowley can remember, with crystal clarity, how small those hands had seemed in his, once. 

“I’m sure He is proud,” Adam says, softly. “In His own way.”

Crowley smiles at his son sidelong. “It doesn’t matter,” Crowley says, with a slight shrug. “I’d have done it all the same, regardless, whether it pleased him or not.”

“All of it?” Adam asks, curiously. They don’t often talk about Crowley’s Fall.

“It led me here,” Crowley says, firmly. “So I don’t regret it.”

Adam nods. He can understand that all too well. 

“Evie has a piano recital tomorrow. Will you come? We’ll probably all go for ice cream, after, so I know Aziraphale is planning to attend.”

Crowley grins. “Yeah, kid. Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

\--

Fin


End file.
